These experiments are nearly always the same. The individual comes out dressed in a brilliant costume. At one side of him there are flags of different nationalities surrounding a panoply of sabers, swords, and yatagans, and at the other, a stack of guns provided with bayonets. Taking a flat saber, whose blade and hilt have been cut out of the same sheet of metal, the blade being from fifty-five to sixty centimeters in length, he introduces its extremity into his throat, taps the hilt gently, and the blade at length entirely disappears. He then repeats the experiment in swallowing the blade at a single gulp. Subsequently, after swallowing and disgorging two of these same swords, he causes one to penetrate up to its guard, a second not quite so far, a third a little less still, and a fourth up to about half its length, the hilts being then arranged as shown in our third [illustration] (C).
A SWORD SWALLOWER.
Pressing now on the hilts, he swallows the four blades at a gulp, and then he takes them out leisurely one by one. The effect is quite surprising. After swallowing several different swords and sabers, he takes an old musket armed with a triangular bayonet, and swallows the latter, the gun remaining vertical over his head. Finally he borrows a large saber from a dragoon who is present for the purpose, and causes two-thirds of it to disappear. As a trick, on being encored, the sword swallower borrows a cane from a person in the audience, and swallows it almost entirely.
POSITION OCCUPIED BY THE SWORD BLADE
IN THE BODY.