The Boy's Own Book of Indoor Games and Recreations / A Popular Encyclopædia for Boys

by C. Stansfeld Hicks; John Nevil Maskelyne; Gordon Stables

This trick was ‘worked up’ very cleverly by Houdin. He ‘palmed’ both the real bullets, substituting one made of wax (hollow) and lampblack for the pistol he gave to the Arab, and crushing it as he rammed the charge home, so that it would not injure him at such short distance. The pistol he used himself had a hollow leaden ball dropped into it, and the cavity in the bullet was filled in with blood, so that when the lead was crushed against the wall the interior contents were splashed upon it.

Houdin was the finest political agent the French Government ever sent out, and the most civilising withal; for the clumsy tricks of the Marabouts, which he exposed, had very little effect upon any but the very lowest class afterwards.

Gun and pistol tricks are so much a part of the conjurer’s art that it may be well to describe some others, to show the ingenuity of these whilom ‘diverting vagabonds’—the wizards—who are now frequently to be found in very good company indeed.

One of the old gun-tricks was somewhat like Houdin’s device for nonplussing the Arab impostors. In this a fowling-piece was used, and loaded by any one in the company, the professor of mystery only taking the liberty of placing the ball—previously examined to prove its genuineness—into the barrel himself. Of course that real ball never went out of the magician’s possession, but a duplicate composed of blacklead was substituted for it, which could be readily reduced to powder by a vigorous ramming home of the charge, and so rendered harmless.

But modern magic goes far beyond so simple a trick, and has elaborated this kind of business until some apparently marvellous results are achieved.

To explain these it will be necessary, in the first place, to notice the peculiar construction of the wizard’s firearm. This consists of two parts, the outer of which is a conical tin funnel like the mouth of a trumpet, and tapering down to a tube, which fits the barrel of an ordinary pistol. This tube runs inside the cone, and affords a free passage for the loading and discharge of the pistol, and between the tube and the outer case any object supposed to be fired therefrom reposes in perfect security. Sometimes the performer borrows two or three watches and places them in a drawer, while he sends his assistant for a plate. To this the watches are transferred, and as the youth advances to the conjurer’s table, he purposely slips and falls, when the plate is smashed, and the watches roll all over the stage. The wizard makes much ado in rebuking this clumsiness, and picks up the fragments of delf and the watches, all of which he finds more or less injured. Never mind; he will soon find a way out of that difficulty, he says, so he proceeds to load the pistol and ram all the débris of the (not silver) plate and the timekeepers into it, keeping them firm in their places with a wad of paper. Now the (supposed) clumsy assistant places a picture frame on the stage, at which the magician takes aim and fires, and at the same instant the plate and watches are seen in the frame (which up to this time apparently rejoiced in a plain black backboard only), all perfect save the plate. This appears with a piece out of it, and the conjurer seems chagrined that he has made a mistake, especially before his unskilful assistant. Looking about the stage he finds the missing piece, and is again equal to the occasion. Standing some distance from the frame, he appears to throw the piece he has found at the ‘willow pattern’ whose other component parts have been so unaccountably welded together. Lo! as the fragment seems to leave his opened palm the plate, whole as when it left the potter’s hands, is ready to be examined by the audience: and the watches, ticking as lively as ever, are restored to the pockets of their respective owners quite unscathed, notwithstanding the fearful trials they seemed to have passed through.

The explanation of this is simplicity itself. When the watches have been collected by the professor they are placed in what appears to be an ordinary drawer, but which is in reality a tricky arrangement that can be made to appear full or empty at pleasure. The conjurer has, of course, shown an empty drawer, but this has a false bottom wherein lie several ‘dummy’ watches, and it is these that are transferred to the plate and afterwards rammed into the pistol. The real watches are carried off the stage by the skilfully-clumsy assistant and attached to the frame (in a manner yet to be described), together with a duplicate of the broken plate before it is introduced to the view of the audience.

This picture-frame is a marvel of deception. Notwithstanding that it appears as if it possessed a plain black backboard only, it is in reality a shallow box, with a spring blind in front of it. Behind this screen the articles are suspended, on a background also black. When the professor fires, the assistant (out of sight) pulls a cord releasing a spring, and the curtain flies up with such rapidity as to be imperceptible from the point of view of the audience. The ‘click’ of the curtain is unheard in the noise made by the pistol, and the effect is as if the watches and plate had been fired from it.

But we have yet to explain how the broken plate is made whole. Our readers will have guessed, probably, that it never was broken at all, and such is the fact. A piece of black cloth lies over one edge of the plate, which makes it appear as if it is broken, and as the magician seems to throw (though he really retains) a piece of the plate actually smashed, the assistant again pulls a string smartly, which is attached to the bit of black cloth, and the plate instantly appears in a perfect state of preservation. That is more than can be said for the contents of all picture-frames after they have been ‘restored.’ Of course these tricks cannot be performed when an audience is very close to the wizard. ‘’Tis distance lends enchantment’ to many things in the conjurer’s art, as in others outside.

Sometimes this trick is ‘worked’ in other ways; say, after a borrowed watch has (apparently) been pounded to bits in a mortar, it is fired from a pistol at a magic target. In this there is no roller-blind illusion, but the ‘bull’s-eye,’ provided with a little hook (hook and eye should go together), revolves perpendicularly on its own axis. The back of the bull’s-eye is precisely similar to the front, but on the hook there the real watch is secretly hung. When the pistol is fired, the pulling of a string releases a spring, and the centre of the target flies round. The mortar employed has a movable bottom, so that the performer can extract the real watch at pleasure. The débris which the conjurer pounds away at, and afterwards loads his trick pistol with, is obtained from the hollow pestle, the performer unscrewing the end of it against the bottom of the mortar as he appears to grind away at the borrowed watch.