PREPARATION.
Have ready a piece of calico of light color, or a white apron, a sponge saturated with a little liquid of the color of blood—port-wine, or the juice of beet-root, will do; also two knives, resembling each other, the one of them whole, the other with a large notch in its blade, so that when placed over the nose it will appear to have cut through the bridge of the nose. A cutler could supply such knives, or they may be purchased at the depots for conjuring apparatus.
Having placed out these articles on your table with seriousness and imposing formality, show to the audience the knife that is whole, and call upon them to observe that it is sufficiently strong and sharp. The other knife must be placed somewhere near you, but where it is sheltered from the observation of the spectators.
Ask some young friend to step forward, assuring him that you will not hurt him. Make him sit down on a chair facing the audience. After having measured the real knife across his nose, say: “But I may as well protect your clothes from being soiled, so I will put an apron round your neck.” Go to the table to take up the apron, and, in doing so, place down the real knife where it cannot be seen, and, with your left hand take up the conjuror’s knife, holding it by the blade, lest any one should observe the notch in it. Conceal at the same time also, in your left hand, the piece of sponge.
Advancing to the chair, tuck, with your right hand, the apron round the youth’s neck. Then press the conjuror’s knife firmly over the nose and leave it there, as if you had cut into the bridge of the nose. At the same time gently squeeze the sponge, and a little of the liquid will make an alarming appearance on the face and on the apron; go on for a short time, covering the face and apron with (apparent) blood. When the audience have seen it long enough, seize up the apron, wipe the face of the youth quite clean, throw away the conjuror’s knife, and exhibit your young friend to the audience all right, and dismiss him with some facetious remark on his courage in undergoing the alarming operation.
[CHAPTER V.]
TRICKS BY MAGNETISM, CHEMISTRY, GALVANISM, OR ELECTRICITY.
There is a class of tricks about which I must say a few words, viz., those that require to be exhibited by the help of magnetism, chemistry, galvanism, or electricity. I need not dwell long on them, for I do not consider them such as the young people, for whom these notes are written, can be recommended to devote their attention to, for the following reasons: in the first place, they are, with a few exceptions, attended with considerable expense. Secondly, the tricks connected with the powerful agencies of galvanism and electricity are dangerous to the unskilful operator; and, even in experienced hands, the most effective of them are uncertain things to manage; therefore their effect cannot be depended on.
Some very interesting tricks have, doubtless, at times been exhibited by the help of galvanism and electricity. We have read of a conjuror by such help confounding a powerful Arab, by first letting him lift with ease a box, and afterwards rendering it impossible for him to raise it, when an electric current had, to his dismay, paralyzed all his strength. It is evident that an experiment of this kind could not be safely attempted by any but a very experienced person. We read also of conjurors who have surprised their audience by receiving them in a dimly-lit theatre, and then firing off a pistol, (to startle the audience and cover the real mode of operation,) they have by electricity lighted up one hundred lamps at once. This has proved very successful on some occasions; but on others, notwithstanding the most careful preparation and the greatest precaution, it has been found that the apparatus would not act, and the impatient spectators have visited the disappointing failure with their indignant murmurs. Other conjurors have become so attached to electric experiments, that they have proposed to regulate all the clocks of a large district by electricity, or have amused themselves by turning electric or galvanic currents to the door-handles of their houses, so that unsuspecting strangers, on touching them, were startled with electric shocks. There is also a trick for rendering one portion of a portrait electric by a metal plate concealed under it, and the spectators being invited to touch some part of the picture, have, on touching the spots that were charged with electricity, received a shock or powerful blow, as if the portrait resented their touching it.
Having briefly given the character of this class of tricks, and stated that they not only require expensive apparatus, but are attended with danger to the inexperienced, there still remains another serious objection, viz., that, like the experiments performed by automaton figures or complicated machinery, they are liable to fail, through any trifling disarrangement, just at the moment when the performer is hoping that his audience will be delighted with his surprising exhibition.