Besides theatres of another kind, there are large arenas, where the entertainments principally consist of feats worked out by electricity and produce effects far beyond anything as yet known in your planet. These arenas are open to the sky, for electric effects are not exhibited in roofed buildings, from fear of the explosions which would probably occur were antagonistic electricities brought in contact with each other in a covered space.
The games exhibited are varied; but, in all, electricity has some part. As I have already said, we have electricities, some attractive, some antipathetic to the human frame,—and by the aid of both kinds many interesting feats are performed.
I have seen a man and horse in the arena, who, at a given signal, would rise gradually and gracefully to a distance of more than fifty feet from the earth. When suspended in the air a cloud, like fire, would encircle them, and then after a certain time, sufficient for the spectators to observe and admire them, they would alight on the earth as gradually and gracefully as they had ascended.
THE FLYING CHILDREN.
In one of these arenas is a large sheet of running water, supplied by a cataract in the neighbourhood; and I have seen the most beautiful effects produced by children gliding over and as it were dancing on its surface. The children are selected from the most graceful and beautiful of those, who, not having sufficient intellect to learn, give no signs of making a progress which would fit them for more important occupations.
These children are taught and willed to move in the most graceful forms. Joining hands and forming exceedingly beautiful groups, they will glide over the cascade and over the surface of the agitated lake, walking, dancing, or reposing.
WILL.
In assuming these graceful forms, the children are aided by a person skilled in the use of the Will, who, with the assistance of our "sympathetic-attracting machines," [1] can will the children to take the most varied and graceful positions. The effect is fascinating, elevating, and refining.
[Footnote 1: See p. 265.]
The man who directs the sympathetic machine, wills the figures from his imagination or memory, this being part of the art in which he is skilled.