Modern effects of this kind, as they are presented on the stage, demand, as a rule, not only great dexterity and years of practice, but the use of elaborate and costly apparatus and the help of skilled assistants. All sorts of ingenious mechanism, for which patents are often taken out—electricity, pneumatics, chemistry, optics, magnetism, and nearly every science and art—are pressed into the service, and the floor, the walls, the platform, and the ceiling may be riddled with wires and traps and springs, for anything you know to the contrary; or the lady and gentleman—or even the little boy or girl—sitting beside you may be confederates. Now, if you will carefully carry out the directions which I am about to give you, you will be able to do the following things—founded on the very essence of professed spiritualism—viz., the rope-tying, the ringing of bells and beating of tambourines without visible agency, mysterious writing, and secret reading—in your own or anybody’s room, in the presence of any number of spectators, in the full light, without preparation, without practice, without assistants or accomplices, without sleight-of-hand, and without any apparatus, except (for one trick) a very simple article, which any boy can make for himself in a few minutes.
Let me first describe the effect of the performance, without any explanation as to how it is done—that is to say, as it will appear to your audience. You give some one a piece of ordinary tape or ribbon, which they can examine as closely as they please. One end of this ribbon, which is about two feet and a half long, is now tied firmly around your wrist. Placing your hands behind your back, you then allow the other end to be fastened around the other wrist in like manner. Thus your hands are tied behind your back, each being secured separately, to prevent the possibility of either slipping out, and the knots, or ends, are then sealed with sealing wax and stamped with a crest or private mark for identification afterwards. Sitting on a chair at the farther end of the room, with your back turned to the company, you pass your arms over the back of the chair, so that all may see the ribbon and seals; and while in this position you invite a spectator to step forward and tie his handkerchief around the cross-bar of the back of the chair, including the ligature which joins your two wrists, knotting the handkerchief tightly and sealing it as well.
So that you are now practically tied to the chair, with your hands fastened together behind you. Two of your audience then hold up a table-cloth or open newspaper in front of you as a temporary screen—of course giving their word not to look behind while so doing; a few bars of mysterious music are played on the piano; in a minute, at a signal from you, the newspaper is snatched away, and you are seen sitting in precisely the same attitude and bound as before, but with your coat removed and lying across your knees! Knots and seals are all discovered on examination to be firm and intact, nor does the cross-bar or any other portion of the chair ‘unship.’
No assistant could have approached you without being seen, and your coat can be passed round, to show that there is nothing peculiar in its construction. You can, if you please, be screened once more for a minute, and put it on again, and the second time you may be found standing beside the chair, entirely free from it, yet having your hands secured as tightly as ever behind your back, and leaving the sealed and knotted handkerchief undisturbed around the cross-bar. This, performed in a dark cabinet, was Ira Davenport’s great feat.
But you may elaborate this much further, and just as easily give some ‘manifestations’ which are truly astounding. The principle which lies at the bottom of it all is very little known, even among professional wizards, and not one person in ten thousand would as much as guess at it. Your hands are tied and secured to the chair in the same manner as last described; but now, in addition, you have your legs and ankles bound to the legs of the chair, and a rope or strap passed around your body. Perfect strangers may do all the tying, and everything is sealed.
This time you had better have a regular screen—a sheet or tablecloth thrown across a clothes-horse makes the best possible—and let it be so arranged that, while hiding your body, it leaves your feet visible. They can therefore see for themselves that you never move from the chair for a single instant, even if it were possible to do so. Handkerchiefs around the ankles will be better seen than cords or ropes. The screen must stand well out in the room, so that there may be no suspicion of a confederate ‘lending you a hand’ from any door. On a small table, concealed by the screen, but quite out of your reach, even if your hands were free, are placed a bell, a tambourine, an umbrella, and a slate or sheet of blank paper.
A few seconds after the clothes-horse has been pulled in front of you—or rather behind you and in front of the audience, for you are sitting with your back towards them—the bell is heard to ring violently, and the umbrella, open, rises above the screen, dancing up and down in time to the music of the piano, presently hitching itself on the top rail. Then your coat comes flying over, and the tambourine is thumped and rattled, the bell never ceasing to ring energetically. Finally you give a shout, as agreed upon, the screen is quickly drawn aside, the bell and tambourine are seen to fall from somewhere—where, nobody can tell—and roll clashing and clattering over the floor before the eyes of all. The umbrella is open, your coat is off, the slate or paper is covered with writing. Yet not a single knot is untied nor a single seal broken: you are in exactly the same position as at first, and none of the articles show any trace of wax or thread. Bear in mind, too, that the spectators have had your feet, the legs of the chair, and those of the table, in full view the whole time, and will have seen that none of them moved in the slightest degree.
The mysterious reading or calculation may be done in conjunction with this, or as a trick by itself. When you have the method which forms its foundation, you can arrange its effect in a dozen different ways, according to your fancy. Perhaps the best and least complicated form is, before you are tied up, to pass round half a dozen slips of paper or cardboard, with a lead pencil, requesting each of the six people to whom they are distributed to write a number—any number they please—thereon in legible figures, secretly. The slips are collected in an envelope, fastened, and brought to you, and you entrust them to the ‘best arithmetician’ in the room, when the rest of the audience have decided who that lucky individual may be, to be opened and added together, without declaring their total or mentioning a word about them, whilst you are behind the screen. Then the number discovered on the sheet of paper or slate will prove to be the exact amount, or the tambourine may fly over and fall before them with the sum total mysteriously inscribed upon it—even before the arithmetician has added the numbers together. Or, as I say, this may constitute an experiment of itself, and the total may be found on a card hitherto blank, or written inside the lining of somebody’s hat, which is placed upon the owner’s head and retained there before the slips are even passed round. Or, before the total is declared, it may be written down privately by the one who has made the addition, the cards burnt, and the ashes rubbed on the performer’s bare arm; when, in the midst of the bluish smudge they produce, the amount will appear in figures of inky blackness.
So much for ‘Spiritualism at Home,’ as viewed from the ‘front.’ Now come behind the scenes and learn the modus operandi. It will not involve a very lengthy description.
The whole of the coat-stripping, bell-ringing, tambourine-beating, umbrella-opening, and other manœuvres executed under shelter of the screen depend upon the fact that it is actually possible to remove one hand from the tape or ribbon which is bound around the wrist and to replace it again without untying the knot! To understand this, just tie one end of a piece of cord around anything—say, the leg of a chair; that will, no doubt, be firm and secure enough. But now proceed to fasten the other end round the other leg, and you will perceive, on considering the matter, that you have only one end to tie with, instead of two as before. The other end is fixed, and cannot be made use of, so that, tie as you will, you can only form a series of loops—in nautical phrase, ‘half-hitches’—around one straight piece. What is the consequence? Why, that these loops, being nothing more than so many rings strung on the line which comes from the other leg of the chair, can be slid backwards and forwards along it. When you have tied the second leg up tightly and neatly, and to all appearance as securely as the other, you have only to slip these rings, or knots, back towards the first leg, to allow of the second being drawn out, and on replacing it again you slide them back against it as firm as ever, having untied nothing.