CHAPTER LIV.—A STORM IN A TEACUP.

Electrical machines are not always as persistently popular as they might be, owing to their possessors being at a loss for novel experiments. The apparatus is put through its facings like soldiers at drill, the bells are rung, the little men are danced up and down between the plates, the lady’s hair is stiffened like quills upon the maligned porcupine, the sparks are extracted on the glass stool, a few shocks are given, and the round ends in a certain weariness, to be repeated at ever-lengthening intervals. The apparatus is always the same, the experiments are the same, and to a good many boys the constant repetition becomes monotonous. Some, of course, take sufficient interest in the matter to master the theory of the experiments and gain a living pleasure in what they do; the majority, less sturdily endowed, require to be led more gently on and have their paths made smoother. All, however, are invariably interested in using their hands as well as their heads, and for their benefit we offer the following hints, and relate how we last raised our storm in a teacup.

We took two pieces of glass tube and laid them side by side on a cup. The tubes had been bought for threepence from the druggist’s across the street, and had been used as peashooters, for which they are most excellently adapted. They are true, smooth, and to the ordinary tin peashooter very much what the modern rifle is to the old brown Bess. They carry a pea—but it suddenly occurs to us that we ought not to have said anything about such objectionable practices, which of course took place a good many years ago, as witness the ‘had been used’ with which the digression was introduced.

The pieces of glass tubing were then thoroughly dried and laid on the cup side by side. Over each of them a piece of tinfoil was pinched to represent the storm-clouds, and in one of the corners of each cloud, in order to make things easy for the electricity, we squeezed in a brass ball. To each cloud we attached a piece of silk twist out of the workbox, and then, by means of some copper wire—brass chain would have done just as well—we connected one cloud with the inside and one with the outside of a laden Leyden jar, or jar charged from the machine, whichever word-combination may appear preferable. We then proceeded to pull the silken strings, the tinfoil clouds slipped along their glassy ways, approached each other slowly, and then—a flash of lightning passed from each to each, and the thunder rolled in the form of the tiny snap which sounded as the discharge took place.

The theory of the thunderstorm suddenly awoke new interest in us, and having succeeded so well in the air, we resolved to advance further and do some damage. We took away one of the tubes, and resting the other on two cups—one at each end—placed a model house between for us to strike. The house was very loosely put together, the walls being only leant up against each other, and so arranged as to fall at the slightest jerk. In the chimney we placed a brass ball for the electricity to gather on instead of streaming off into the air, as it does on an ordinary lightning-conductor, and then, having joined up to the jar, we brought the cloud over and got our flash as we had hoped.

Then we soared to higher flights and put a pinch of gunpowder in the way of the flash, in the hope that we should have a little blow up, but, alas! the flash went through so quickly that the powder was scattered. Then we remembered the wet string with which our lecturer used to operate, and placing that in the path of the current, we slowed the rate, kept the flash in the powder long enough to ignite it, and blew down the walls of our house in grand style.

Then we worked up to our crowning success in the experiment line. We had a small model of a ship, and we resolved to strike it by lightning. We hung our cloud over a basin. Into the basin we put our ship, having first connected the foremast with our jar, and placed the least pinch of powder in a hole, where it entered the deck. The jar was charged, the cloud hung in the sky, the ship came ‘sailing, sailing o’er the sea;’ it neared the storm; it passed into it; it came within striking distance; there was a flash, a crack, and ‘the saucy frigate floated on the bosom of the waves’—in the wash-hand basin—‘a helpless wreck.’

‘What was the use of all that?’ Well, the use was that we clearly understood what before we had half doubted because we had only taken it for granted. We left off talking about the ‘electric fluid’ and ‘thunderbolts;’ we no longer looked upon electricity as something liquid which dropped out of a cloud with a bang; we ceased to imagine that lightning-conductors should be insulated, ‘to lead the fluid.’ And we saw that the ‘stroke’ went up from the earth as well as down from the sky; that the flash took place at the meeting, and was simply due to the necessary transference in attaining equilibrium.

A good deal of the success of the experiment was due to the size of the jar, the quantity of electricity it accumulated being proportionate to the extent of the coated surface; while the intensity depended on the thickness of the glass. Ours was a fair-sized jar, but its strength was nothing like that of Cuthbertson’s famous battery, which he built for the Tylerian Society at Haarlem, which consisted of a hundred jars each of five and a half square feet, so that the total amount of coated surface was five hundred and fifty square feet, sufficient to magnetise large steel bars, rend four-inch blocks of boxwood in pieces, melt into red-hot globules iron wires twenty-five feet long, and dissipate eight-inch tin wires in a cloud of smoke. Of course with an ordinary battery we could have done as well, but even with frictional electricity distance is of little importance. Did not Bishop Watson, of Llandaff, send a discharge from a Leyden jar through 2,800 feet of wire and the same distance of earth? Did he not, at Shooter’s Hill, send a discharge through 10,600 feet of wire supported on insulators of baked wood? Did not Franklin, in 1748, send a Leyden jar discharge across the Schuylkill? and did not De Luc discharge a jar across the whole width of the Lake of Geneva? We may not be Watsons, Franklins, or De Lucs, and have their wealth of apparatus and dexterity of manipulation, but the poorest and clumsiest lad amongst us is quite capable of arranging the necessary device for securing ‘a storm in a teacup.’

SOME VERY ELEMENTARY GEOMETRY!
1. The extremities of a line are points.2. A super fishes (superficies)—an acute angle.3. A Polly gone (polygon).
4. A problem proposes something to be done, such as theconstruction of a figure5. A postulate is a problem so simple that it is unnecessary topoint out the method of performing it.6. An axiom is a theorem the truth of which is soapparent as to be instantly admitted.
SOME VERY ELEMENTARY GEOMETRY!
1. The extremities of a line are points.2. A super fishes (superficies)—an acute angle.3. A Polly gone (polygon).
4. A problem proposes something to be done, such as theconstruction of a figure5. A postulate is a problem so simple that it is unnecessary topoint out the method of performing it.6. An axiom is a theorem the truth of which is soapparent as to be instantly admitted.

SECTION X.
CONJURERS AND CONJURING—VENTRILOQUISM AND SPIRITUALISM, ETC.

FUN IN OLDEN TIMES.

[Drawn by Gordon Browne.

CHAPTER LV.—MYSTERY AND MUMMERY; OR, HOUDIN AND THE ARABS.
By John Nevil Maskelyne, of the Egyptian Hall.

The famous French conjurer, Robert Houdin, was engaged by the French Government in 1856 to proceed to Algiers, and there demonstrate to the natives that the Marabouts, whom the ignorant Arabs believed to possess supernatural powers, were only very clumsy tricksters. Never had conjurer a higher mission than this—to erase a debasing superstition from the minds of these children of the desert!

At the Algiers theatre were assembled all the leading chiefs and a large audience of minor natives. Houdin, skilled in all the sleight-of-hand, the scientific knowledge, and the finesse of the French school of magicians, was equal to any emergency. He was as cool and collected as on his own stage at Paris, and addressed his strange audience in a few well-chosen words, which were translated to the Arabs by interpreters provided by the French Government of the town.

In this little speech he told the natives that his art was simply the outcome of science and dexterity: that if his feats excelled those of the Marabouts, his audience could judge for themselves whether they had not been the victims of imposture for many years at the hands of very clumsy jugglers indeed; and that in the end he hoped to leave those poor wizards without a leg to stand on—professionally of course!

The conjurer commenced his performance with a few ordinary sleight-of-hand tricks sufficiently puzzling to create great wonder in the native mind, and then proceeded to bolder and more ambitious efforts. Carrying a small box down to the ‘practicable’ or ‘rake,’ running from the stage to the pit, he declared that though a little child might lift it, he could defy the strongest man in that assembly to do so if he willed otherwise. This being interpreted, an Arab of middle height, but well built and muscular, ventured to the test.

‘Are you very strong?’ asked Houdin.

‘Oh, yes,’ replied the son of the desert, carelessly, not heeding the Frankish magician’s assertion that he could deprive him of his strength.

Houdin allowed the man to pick up the box easily, as if it were a toy, and return it to the ‘rake,’ smiling to think that he could be made as a little child. But Houdin now made some mystic passes over the box, and requested the dusky Hercules to raise it once more. He tried; but tug and strain as he would, the box was immoveable. He stopped at length, panting, and was on the point of leaving his task, when pride overcame a desire to escape from this enchantment, and he made one final effort, cheered by his compatriots in front. All in vain: and just as he was on the point of giving in once more, he sank, with a terrible yell, upon his knees.

The reason of this was that the conjurer had given a signal, and the poor man had received the shock of an electrical current, transmitted to the handles of the box. By similar means had the box been held to the stage when the conjurer willed it, for a bar of soft iron underneath the ‘rake’ was converted into a magnet by passing an electrical current in coils round it. When the current was suspended by Houdin’s assistant behind the scenes, the bar was demagnetised, and the box could be lifted up. Of course this was a mystery to the natives, and as the beaten Arab retired, murmurs of ‘Shaitan’ and ‘Djenoum’ running round the startled audience told that, notwithstanding the assurances of the interpreters, the natives gave Houdin credit for having dealings with one who shall here be nameless.

The skilful professor had been informed that the most startling of the supposed miracles of the Marabouts was their standing in front of a loaded gun, which, though pointed at them and the trigger pulled, producing sparks in plenty from the flint, would yet not go off. The cabalistic jargon of the Marabout was supposed to place his sacred person in safety; and this was one of the tricks the French Government was anxious to prove an imposture.

Houdin, though the guns would not go off, soon exploded the marvel. He saw at once that the mystery was of the simplest, the Marabout merely stopping up the vent of the firearm with grease while handing it to the experimentalist. Accordingly this was the next feat Houdin called the attention of his audience to, declaring himself invulnerable (by trickery alone), and defying even the ‘crack shot’ of the district to hit him.

An Arab, delighted to have a human target, bounded upon the stage with the words, ‘I will kill you!’ This was a Marabout jealous of a sorcerer greater than himself. Houdin gave him a cavalry pistol to examine. The man blew down the barrel and into the nipple, and then loaded it with powder and ball. To add to his other precautions, he had previously marked the bullet.

The French prestidigitateur placed an apple upon the point of a knife, and holding it up, said, ‘Aim straight at my heart!’ Though the Arab firmly believed the weapon to be really deadly, he took careful aim and fired point blank at Houdin. There was a pause. The conjurer fell not, but calmly advanced to the man, and presented him with the apple, in the heart of which the marked bullet was found, instead of in Houdin’s.

You see, the Frenchman had dexterously changed the marked bullet for a similar one in appearance, but composed of an amalgam of tinfoil and quicksilver, which is about the same weight as lead, and disperses on the firing. Into a hole previously made in the apple, on the side kept from the view of the audience, Houdin dropped the marked ball before placing the fruit upon his knife, and had closed the aperture with a round piece of apple afterwards, just as a cheesemonger makes his Stilton whole again after you have tasted from his scoop. When the apple was cut open, and the bullet fell out, attention was at once directed to the marks upon it, and, of course, so drawn from any scrutiny of the débris of the ball that had been fired from the pistol.

Houdin’s powers were put to another test subsequently to his public performance. A deputation of the élite of Algiers and its neighbourhood waited upon him, headed by Bash-aga Bou-Allem, the African Rothschild, to still further test the gun-trick. Houdin was prepared. From beneath his snowy-white burnous an aged Arab produced two richly-chased pistols. These the Frankish conjurer loaded, previously handing round the bullets for inspection. Then he passed one pistol to the chief, who, at six paces, fired, and the ball was apparently caught between Houdin’s teeth. Dropping this from his mouth to prove its solidity, Houdin now took up the other pistol and fired at the stone wall of the apartment, when—great wonder to the chiefs, and dismay to the impostors—the bullet apparently drew blood from the stone. One of the defeated Marabouts actually put his finger on the blood and tasted it; then he collapsed.

This trick was ‘worked up’ very cleverly by Houdin. He ‘palmed’ both the real bullets, substituting one made of wax (hollow) and lampblack for the pistol he gave to the Arab, and crushing it as he rammed the charge home, so that it would not injure him at such short distance. The pistol he used himself had a hollow leaden ball dropped into it, and the cavity in the bullet was filled in with blood, so that when the lead was crushed against the wall the interior contents were splashed upon it.

Houdin was the finest political agent the French Government ever sent out, and the most civilising withal; for the clumsy tricks of the Marabouts, which he exposed, had very little effect upon any but the very lowest class afterwards.

Gun and pistol tricks are so much a part of the conjurer’s art that it may be well to describe some others, to show the ingenuity of these whilom ‘diverting vagabonds’—the wizards—who are now frequently to be found in very good company indeed.

One of the old gun-tricks was somewhat like Houdin’s device for nonplussing the Arab impostors. In this a fowling-piece was used, and loaded by any one in the company, the professor of mystery only taking the liberty of placing the ball—previously examined to prove its genuineness—into the barrel himself. Of course that real ball never went out of the magician’s possession, but a duplicate composed of blacklead was substituted for it, which could be readily reduced to powder by a vigorous ramming home of the charge, and so rendered harmless.

But modern magic goes far beyond so simple a trick, and has elaborated this kind of business until some apparently marvellous results are achieved.

To explain these it will be necessary, in the first place, to notice the peculiar construction of the wizard’s firearm. This consists of two parts, the outer of which is a conical tin funnel like the mouth of a trumpet, and tapering down to a tube, which fits the barrel of an ordinary pistol. This tube runs inside the cone, and affords a free passage for the loading and discharge of the pistol, and between the tube and the outer case any object supposed to be fired therefrom reposes in perfect security. Sometimes the performer borrows two or three watches and places them in a drawer, while he sends his assistant for a plate. To this the watches are transferred, and as the youth advances to the conjurer’s table, he purposely slips and falls, when the plate is smashed, and the watches roll all over the stage. The wizard makes much ado in rebuking this clumsiness, and picks up the fragments of delf and the watches, all of which he finds more or less injured. Never mind; he will soon find a way out of that difficulty, he says, so he proceeds to load the pistol and ram all the débris of the (not silver) plate and the timekeepers into it, keeping them firm in their places with a wad of paper. Now the (supposed) clumsy assistant places a picture frame on the stage, at which the magician takes aim and fires, and at the same instant the plate and watches are seen in the frame (which up to this time apparently rejoiced in a plain black backboard only), all perfect save the plate. This appears with a piece out of it, and the conjurer seems chagrined that he has made a mistake, especially before his unskilful assistant. Looking about the stage he finds the missing piece, and is again equal to the occasion. Standing some distance from the frame, he appears to throw the piece he has found at the ‘willow pattern’ whose other component parts have been so unaccountably welded together. Lo! as the fragment seems to leave his opened palm the plate, whole as when it left the potter’s hands, is ready to be examined by the audience: and the watches, ticking as lively as ever, are restored to the pockets of their respective owners quite unscathed, notwithstanding the fearful trials they seemed to have passed through.

The explanation of this is simplicity itself. When the watches have been collected by the professor they are placed in what appears to be an ordinary drawer, but which is in reality a tricky arrangement that can be made to appear full or empty at pleasure. The conjurer has, of course, shown an empty drawer, but this has a false bottom wherein lie several ‘dummy’ watches, and it is these that are transferred to the plate and afterwards rammed into the pistol. The real watches are carried off the stage by the skilfully-clumsy assistant and attached to the frame (in a manner yet to be described), together with a duplicate of the broken plate before it is introduced to the view of the audience.

This picture-frame is a marvel of deception. Notwithstanding that it appears as if it possessed a plain black backboard only, it is in reality a shallow box, with a spring blind in front of it. Behind this screen the articles are suspended, on a background also black. When the professor fires, the assistant (out of sight) pulls a cord releasing a spring, and the curtain flies up with such rapidity as to be imperceptible from the point of view of the audience. The ‘click’ of the curtain is unheard in the noise made by the pistol, and the effect is as if the watches and plate had been fired from it.

But we have yet to explain how the broken plate is made whole. Our readers will have guessed, probably, that it never was broken at all, and such is the fact. A piece of black cloth lies over one edge of the plate, which makes it appear as if it is broken, and as the magician seems to throw (though he really retains) a piece of the plate actually smashed, the assistant again pulls a string smartly, which is attached to the bit of black cloth, and the plate instantly appears in a perfect state of preservation. That is more than can be said for the contents of all picture-frames after they have been ‘restored.’ Of course these tricks cannot be performed when an audience is very close to the wizard. ‘’Tis distance lends enchantment’ to many things in the conjurer’s art, as in others outside.

Sometimes this trick is ‘worked’ in other ways; say, after a borrowed watch has (apparently) been pounded to bits in a mortar, it is fired from a pistol at a magic target. In this there is no roller-blind illusion, but the ‘bull’s-eye,’ provided with a little hook (hook and eye should go together), revolves perpendicularly on its own axis. The back of the bull’s-eye is precisely similar to the front, but on the hook there the real watch is secretly hung. When the pistol is fired, the pulling of a string releases a spring, and the centre of the target flies round. The mortar employed has a movable bottom, so that the performer can extract the real watch at pleasure. The débris which the conjurer pounds away at, and afterwards loads his trick pistol with, is obtained from the hollow pestle, the performer unscrewing the end of it against the bottom of the mortar as he appears to grind away at the borrowed watch.

CHAPTER LVI.—VENTRILOQUISM, AND HOW TO ACQUIRE THE ART.
By William Crompton.

The etymology of the word Ventriloquism gives an incorrect idea of the art, as it is based upon the old notion that the ventriloquial voice really proceeded from the stomach. As a matter of fact, the sources of all such sounds are in the throat or mouth.

By the aid of the laryngoscope, a scientific instrument mirroring the action and vibrating changes of the vocal organ, it has been shown that tone and voice come when the cords in the larynx are excited by the breath; but a muffled vibration in the cavity of the mouth, which is caused by the action of the tongue and lips, produces whispering, in which the words appear as from a distance, and, thus robbed of their distinct vocal sounds, can be produced with little or no movement of the muscles of the face.

But the ventriloquist knows full well that the judgment must be led astray quite as much as the ear; therefore, in disguising the true direction of his voice—or those assumed voices which he has added to his own—he requires finesse of a high order, which, while he shall be apparently unconscious of doing so, must lead his audience to certain conclusions respecting the situation of the sounds. In this he is greatly assisted by Nature, which lays the foundation of the art in the fact of the uncertainty of their direction as well as distance.

It was formerly common on the Continent for performers on the stage to go through the dumb show of singing while persons off the stage supplied the voices. The same uncertainty as to the direction of sound is manifested at a marionette show, where the actors—wooden dolls—‘strut and fret their hour upon the stage,’ their actions leading the spectators to ally the speeches with them, and to look upon the manikins almost as veritable human beings. The illusion, if properly carried out, is very perfect.

One of the most favourite modes of ventriloquists now and for a long time past has been to have two or more wooden figures with jaws moved by strings acted upon by the hands of the performer, or by pedals. The artist then holds converse between these, and so takes attention from his own movements. Another capital device is the ‘Talking Hand,’ which it may be here well to describe. Having first provided yourself with a mitten purposely made, with a hole in the centre, and a frill round it, thus:—

and painted the side of your hand to represent Biddy the apple-woman’s face, so:

you are ready to make a nice little speech, and introduce ‘Biddy’ to your expectant audience in the back parlour.

Indian ink will give her eyes as black as Susan’s, and a little red paint, judiciously applied to the top of the thumb and that part of the hand immediately above it, will materially assist the illusion by giving her a mouth.

The [annexed] is a picture of Biddy with her new cap on. Her nose must be indicated by black lines, and a slight redness at the uptilted end may not be considered out of character. The chin, you observe, is painted on the thumb.

Now stitch a skirt to the lower part of the mitten, and throw a shawl round her head, and you have the old apple-woman to the life.

You must arrange a little dialogue between Biddy and yourself, keeping the imaginations of the spectators in full play, so as to draw attention from your lips and muscles, which you must nevertheless keep in as much rest as possible. Let Biddy’s sentences be short and emphatic, and in a tone as unlike your natural voice as you can assume. As Biddy speaks you must move your thumb up and down, which motion can be so made as to give the idea of the lips moving.

How the imagination can be led astray even without motions at all may be instanced in the case of the imitations of Saville Carey, who often blew through a narrow chink in the corner of a coffee-room with an east-wind like whistle, whereupon the company began to shiver with cold, and some one was sure to rise and examine the windows to see if they were air-tight!

Starting, then, with these peculiarities of Nature on his side (that the direction and distance of sound are difficult to fix, and that the imagination is easily played upon), the ventriloquist, by tricks of manner, with subtle movements and actions, governs the imagination of his audience, and directs their attention to some given spot from which he desires they should think the voice proceeds, while simultaneously imitating it as closely as possible.

The ventriloquial power any one with a fair range of voice and patient practice may acquire. The rarer gift is that of mimicry, by which the illusions of change of tone, pitch, etc., are so greatly assisted. Unless endowed with this in some degree one would find the pursuit of the art a vain and profitless task, but a little will sometimes go a long way, and a careful noting of the modes of some good professors of ventriloquism will give many useful hints to the neophyte, after he has got ‘by heart’ all that has been written upon the subject.

He will notice that the jaws need never be moved, and that though the lips must be in action at times, the effect is neutralised by dexterously turning the side face to the spectators on those occasions. This standing in profile has another advantage also, as the lips can be drawn down on the hidden side, and a considerable alteration in the tone can thus be produced where required.

The vowel sounds, in various tones, may be obtained without movement by nearly closing the mouth, and resting the upper teeth on the inner part of the upper lips. Consonants are much more difficult, and are seldom or never used while facing the audience. When there is no excuse for turning the face sideways the expedient is adopted of dropping the consonants, which would make such a sentence as, ‘Mind what you are doing, you bad boy!’ sound like ‘Ind ‘ot you’re doing, you ‘ad whoy!’

The greater the compass of voice, of course the greater will be the pitch, while practice will produce elasticity in the organs. One word of advice is necessary as to practice—that is, you should never strain the voice. Let the power be developed naturally, or you will inevitably defeat your own object and lead to hoarseness, if no worse.

Study before a mirror. Any illusions you can there produce will be greater in effect when distance lends enchantment to the view, for the ventriloquist’s art cannot be practised with full effect in a very limited area.

An accurate ear will soon enable its possessor to imitate sounds, such as the barking of dogs, sawing wood, etc., but his difficulties will commence when he comes to attempt complete and rapid changes of voice, locality, and distance. From youth to age, from the infant in its nurse’s arms to the ‘lean and slippered pantaloon,’ the transition must be like a flash of lightning in rapidity. Dialects should also be acquired, and varieties of age and sex carefully studied.

It is after the human voice has been imitated without any apparent motion of the lips, and conversations with imaginary individuals have been carefully studied, that the higher power of the ventriloquist comes into play, and the performer has to lead the imagination of his audience from the real to the supposed source of the sounds. This is what, in acoustic illusions, is as necessary as glib speech (‘patter’) to the conjurer, who, by thus calling attention from his hands, is enabled to perform many tricks successfully which he might otherwise fail in. We have said that our judgments are very fallible in the matter of sound, and the performer’s efforts towards indicating their supposed direction is, to a great extent, the measure of his capacity as a ventriloquist.