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.