Magic, Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversions, Including Trick Photography

by Albert A. Hopkins

There is one trick that always tends to confirm the spectator’s illusion, and that is this: in the little prefatory speech that the ventriloquist makes, he gives out that he is a foreigner, and does not speak the language of his audience well; in fact, he expresses himself with difficulty and with a strong accent. His dummies, on the contrary, answer in very good French or English, as the case may be; and when the auditors hear them, they are led to believe that ventriloquism counts for nothing in their answers or conversation.

Explanation of Ventriloquism.—The art of ventriloquism is primarily based upon an acoustic phenomenon—the difficulty that the ear experiences in determining the exact point whence comes the sound that it hears. That there is such an incertitude as to the direction of sounds is easily verified, and the following are a few cases in proof of it. Mr. Stuart Cumberland, a mind reader, who exhibited at Paris a few years ago, performed a little experiment in the drawing-room, after his “second-sight” séances, which usually resulted in surprising and amusing his auditors. In this experiment, a willingly disposed person, being seated in the middle of the room, allowed his eyes to be bandaged. Then Mr. Cumberland took a five-franc piece and made it jingle by striking it with a hard object, say a key or another coin. The person submitted to the experiment then had to tell the direction from whence the sound emanated, and to give the distance at which it seemed to him to have been made. In almost all cases the individual guessed a direction and distance very different from the real one, and the error, which was ofttimes great, naturally provoked great hilarity from the spectators. Moreover, Mr. Cumberland, by varying the position of his hand in such a way that the latter formed a screen between the coin and the ear of the blindfolded person, caused the latter’s perception as to the direction of the sound to vary, although, as a matter of fact, the experimenter had not budged from his first position.

At a soirée, we have seen a member of the Institute, who had cheerfully submitted himself to the experiment, extremely surprised, when his bandage was removed, at the gross errors in auditory perception that he had just committed. The illusion that it is thus possible to produce by varying the positions of the hand in which a coin is jingled is, in the main, analogous to that obtained through ventriloquism. Another example: If several persons be standing in the same line, at a few feet from a spectator, and one of them emits a prolonged sound—a vowel, for example, say a a a—that requires no motion of the lips, the spectator will be unable to determine from which of the persons the sound proceeds; or if, moreover, he tries to point the one out, he will be almost certain to commit an error, the person designated by him being the third or fourth to the right or left of the one who actually produced the sound.

In the choruses of operas, an endeavor is made to have an agreeable aspect in addition to vocal qualities; and, as a beautiful voice is not always accompanied with a pretty face, it often happens that in the first row of a chorus they will place pretty supernumeraries, who, although not obliged to sing, open their mouths and make believe pronounce words, while in reality the singing is being done only by their companions in the rear. This fraud is very rarely detected by the audience.

If a man standing near a child should, without moving his lips, speak with a squeaking voice, while the child was making believe pronounce words, it might easily be believed that the words heard were being spoken by the child. It is possible to teach a dog to open his mouth and follow the motions of his master’s hand; and if the master be any sort of a ventriloquist, he can easily make believe that he has an animal endowed with speech.

The ventriloquist who, standing near his dummies, succeeds in keeping his facial muscles absolutely immovable, while his figures become animate and move their lips and seem to speak, produces such an illusion among the spectators by virtue of the acoustic principle that we have just noted; that is, the difficulty that the ear experiences in determining the precise point whence emanates the sound that it hears.

It is to be remarked that the chief difficulty in the art of ventriloquism is to keep the countenance immovable, and to speak without causing any of the facial muscles to act.

The ventriloquist who talks with a dummy that is interrogating him, addresses his questions in an ordinary voice, articulates distinctly, and plainly moves his lips; but when the dummy answers, the ventriloquist’s face no longer contracts, and his lips scarcely part except to smile. The facial immobility preserved by him while he is really speaking, then, can be explained by recalling a few principles of grammar, which are merely applications of the physiology of the voice.

Articulate speech, which separates the language of man from that of the lower animals, is divided, as grammar teaches, into sounds and articulations. The sounds or vowels are made up of all the continuous and uniform noises that the vocal organs can emit. Thus a, e, i, o, and u are vowels, because they may be infinitely prolonged; a a a a a a, for example. There are a greater number of vowels than is usually admitted in writing; it is possible, in fact, to modify them to infinity, so to speak, by a slightly more open or more closed sound. They may be classified in the form of gamuts, each having a typical vowel, the entire corresponding series of which is but the result of a more and more pronounced contraction of the lips, without the tongue and other vocal organs having to undergo the slightest modification.