What's What in America

by Eugene V. Brewster

Why is it that so many are willing to attribute occult powers to all magicians who perform inexplicable tricks? There is scarcely a person who cannot do one or more card tricks which will puzzle the most astute observer, but we do not marvel because we know that they are merely tricks; but let the trickster once announce that he is a mind-reader or a hypnotist, and three out of every five will accept the statement as truth and not seek further to disprove it. Thus, we are taught that credulity is a disease with which most persons are afflicted, and that it is very easy to fool the best of us. Those who are so weak as to accept every mystery as a manifestation of supernatural power, should obtain one of the many books which can be had at any library, and make a study of the art of legerdemain. Then, when attending a spiritualistic seance, or a slate-writing exposition, the student will be able readily to detect the fraud and to duplicate it for the amusement of his own friends.

If every investigator would, before going to a seance, buy one or more of the books, which are on sale at every bookstore, showing how the various stage tricks are done, there would not be many spiritualists in the world. These books sharpen the wits, and while they may not give the precise methods adopted by the medium to be visited, they will show how easy it is to deceive the eye and to fool the best of us.

Much has been said of the wonderful tricks of the fakirs in India, particularly of the Great Mango Trick, and all kinds of supernatural powers have been ascribed to these clever people. In these exhibitions, the fakirs take a seed and a pile of sand, and make a Mango tree grow, in a few minutes, to the height of three or four feet. The secret lies in the fact that the leaves and twigs of the Mango are such that they can be folded into a very small compass and rolled up within the hollow seed, so that when they are unrolled they do not show the slightest crease. The fakir covers the whole with a cloth, and operates beneath it, piling the dirt around it, and exhibiting the building tree occasionally to his astonished audience. Baldwin, "The White Mahatma," has exposed this and many others of the Indian tricks, in his book, "The Secrets of Mahatma Land Explained."

Slate-writing tricks are done in a hundred different ways. Some operators carry a tiny point of pencil under their thumb nail, some have chemical compounds which render writing invisible until heated, or moistened, and some have duplicate slates. The messages they write are obtained in various ways, often by means of accomplices, and still oftener by guess-work.

Some mediums have a regular detective force who make it a business to get acquainted with all susceptible persons, or prospective customers, and after getting a history of these persons, they convey it to the medium, who only has to await the coming of the victims to be able to make startling revelations.

The mind readers also operate largely by means of confederates, and most of the theatrical performers have clever trappings. One of these was exposed recently in a Long Island village, when it was discovered that the operator had several telephone wires running under the floor of the theatre, from the rear of the stage. In another instance, it was found that the sheets of cardboard, which were passed around for the audience to rest their papers upon, were sensitized so that when they were collected and subjected to chemical treatment they would make visible the writing that had been done over them. The questions asked were communicated to the operator by an accomplice in the wings. Another method, adopted by those who claim to read the numbers in watch cases, and to tell the numbers on banknotes, is that of a code of signals sent to the operator by a confederate in the audience. These codes are sometimes composed of words, and sometimes of gestures and signals.

One noted spiritualist claimed to be able to put the subject under a spirit influence and give him superhuman strength. For instance, the subject would support his feet on two little stools, and his hands upon two others, each pair of stools being about five feet apart, and he would then arch his body upward, in the form of a bridge. A heavy anvil was then placed upon his abdomen, and the operator would take a huge sledge hammer and beat a piece of red hot iron into a horseshoe. This was only an experiment in inertia, and the heavy blows were hardly felt by the man below, the effect of them being almost absorbed by the large mass of iron. It was also noticed that when heavy weights were lifted at arm's length, they were so arranged as to lie along the forearm, this position being more graceful and about fifty per cent. easier. Leather straps were broken around the chest, and this was done by means of a sharp tongue to the buckle, filed to an edge, which cut the strap with slight pressure. (The audience eagerly examined the strap in advance, but never thought of examining the buckle.) Heavy Jack-chains were also broken by the subject, but these chains all contained one weak link, of unwelded soft iron, which would stretch out when pulled in a certain direction. Pennies were broken with ease, but these were, of course, prepared in advance, by placing them in a vice and working them back and forth many times until they became soft in the middle.

Innumerable tricks are done by means of cans and other vessels containing false bottoms, or several compartments, and every stage where magicians perform contains various trap doors in the floor, mirrors, and other illusions. A modern scheme is to have two rows of blinding lights, before a black background, so that the audience cannot see the machinery. By this contrivance, figures on the stage are made to float in the air, and to do all kinds of apparently impossible things. One familiar performance has a man at a piano rise in air and revolve rapidly, all in full view—apparently—of the audience, and another makes a lady dance in midair, and take gigantic strides at enormous speed. These tricks are done by means of machinery, concealed from view by optical illusions, the lady having an iron belt about her waist which connects with the hidden machinery in the rear.

Another familiar trick is the appearance and disappearance of a person into or from a box, basket, coffin, and so on, also in full view of the audience. It will usually be observed that these are placed near to the back curtain, where it is easy for a person to enter or exit through a secret opening, but sometimes it is done through a trapdoor in the floor. Once I had the pleasure of assisting Hermann the Great at "Hermann's Theatre" on Broadway, since burned down. I went to his dressing room before the performance, and he gave me a tiny rabbit which I concealed in my ulster pocket, and at the same time several other confederates were given "props," such as silk hats, in which omelets were afterwards made, and handkerchiefs with red moons in the center, and red handkerchiefs with white moons, which were afterwards used in the performance by Hermann who cut a circle out of the middle of a white handkerchief and one from a red handkerchief, and afterwards produced out of the audience the handkerchiefs aforesaid, much to the wonderment of the audience. The rabbit I held was the counterpart of another which Hermann shot from a pistol on the stage, and which was afterwards found in my pocket, much to my apparent chagrin.

The art of magic, while by no means a lost art, is not so popular now as formerly, yet it still has a firm hold on human credulity. As Barnum used to say, "The people love to be humbugged." Inborn in us is that love of the marvelous which caused our ancestors to believe in astrology, sorcery and witchcraft. The stage magician is well aware of this, and as the old tricks become familiar to their audiences, they soon discover new methods to satisfy this natural propensity to crave mystery. Some good folks say that all magic is bad, in that it is deceit and treachery; but this seems rather a lame argument when it is remembered that the magician practically tells his audience that he is going to fool them, and that he is merely matching his dexterity against their quickness of perception. The real harm and danger comes of the modern tricks of magic, in which the magician pretends that he is possessed of some supernatural powers, such as spiritualistic manifestations, clairvoyance, mind reading, slate-writing, etc. If the real truth were known, these charlatans probably reason thus: "We are magicians, the people love to be mystified, we can no longer entertain them with the old tricks, they are ever ready to believe that which they cannot understand, the supernatural is always entertaining; and since we must make a living some how, we will perform our tricks and claim that they are of supernatural origin." There is some logic in this view, from their viewpoint, but from the standpoint of us who see the danger in, and who are trying to destroy, superstition, it is a practice that should be suppressed.