The room in which this trick is to be performed should have a smaller one adjoining it, about eight feet square. The magician in the first place shows the small apartment to the spectator, who perceives that it contains nothing but an empty chair placed against the wall. The partition between the two rooms is provided with a small hole, covered with glass, exactly opposite the chair, and at about the ordinary height of the eyes. On the inner side there are two grooves, in which slide a block of wood containing a prism, as shown in [fig. 57], which may be quickly and easily replaced by a piece of plane glass. On looking through this opening, the spectator sees a man sitting in a chair, but suddenly, without any apparent cause, the man changes into a goat, a sheep or some other animal. The sudden replacing of the prism, which takes place without the spectator perceiving it, causes him to see, not the floor with the man and chair upon it, but the ceiling, which is carpeted exactly in the same way, and is provided with a precisely similar chair, upon which is placed a goat or any other animal.
Fig. 57.—The Arrangement of the Reversing Prism.
While looking at the goat, the plane glass is substituted for the prism, and the man reappears; another movement of the prism, and he changes into a sheep, a figure of a sheep having in the meantime replaced that of the goat. Of course it is necessary not merely to have the walls, floors, and chairs precisely alike, but they must each occupy the same relation to each other. If it is desirable only to change the head, it is simply necessary to have a lay figure with a moveable head, dressed precisely in the same manner as the living operator, in the upper portion of the chamber. At the end, by the substitution of the empty chair, the individual may be made to disappear entirely.
There may often be seen in the streets of London, a man showing a wonderful instrument, consisting of a telescope cut in two, the two portions being separated from each other by an interval of three or four inches. On looking through the instrument, the spectator of course sees the object at which it is pointed; but what is his astonishment to find, that when the showman places a brick between the two halves of the instrument he sees just as well as before. The showman generally informs him that the instrument in question has such powerful lenses, that it will not only see through a brick, but even through a policeman’s head if it happened to be in the way; and the spectator, having paid his penny, goes away perfectly mystified, until, like the young lady who believed that all machinery was worked “by a screw, somehow,” he comforts himself with the idea that the trick is performed “by a mirror, somehow.” The following figure will, however, soon clear up the mystery.
Fig. 58.—The Goat Trick.
Let F M, L G be an ordinary telescope tube, to be separated in the middle by an interval large enough to insert a brick, the hand, or some other opaque object. The whole is fixed on a stand, consisting of a square tube with a couple of elbows to it. Between G and L a mirror (A) is placed diagonally, which receives the image of the objects to be looked at. This mirror sends the image downwards to another placed diagonally at C, a third being placed at D, and a fourth at B. The horizontal ray, meeting the mirror at A, is consequently bent downwards to C, then travels horizontally to D, when it is reflected upwards to B, in which it is seen by the eye. Of course a simple tube without any lenses at all would serve the same purpose, but the fact of its being a telescope serves to distract the attention of the too curious observer.
Fig. 59.—How to see through a Brick.