In the first place the blindfold test[130] as produced by Alexis Didier to mystify Houdin. Putting cotton on the eyes and covering it with a handkerchief is now used by amateurs in the cheapest kind of what we term “muscle reading.” There is not the slightest difficulty in seeing beneath such a bandage, sometimes over it, and the range of vision can easily be determined by a test. In Paris I saw a mysterious performer, named Benoval, who had his eyes glued together with adhesive paper, on top of it cotton was placed, and over the cotton a handkerchief, but he danced around bottles and burning candles without any difficulty.
Regarding the information given clairvoyantly to Madame Robert Houdin during another seance with Alexis; Houdin at that time was one of the best known characters of Paris, a public person, and it was the easiest thing in the world for Alexis to gather information concerning him and his family. Houdin may not have been acquainted with the subtlety of what we now term “fishing,” “stalling,” or “killing time,” in order to get information or put something over. He might have been mystified but his knowledge of Spiritualism and clairvoyance was nil according to his own statement.
One of the demonstrations presented by Alexis to mystify Houdin was the reading from a book, by the seer, several pages in advance of a page designated by the person holding the book at the time. There does not seem to be any really authentic details reported regarding the exact performance of this man, Alexis, consequently much must of necessity be left to conjecture and a knowledge of the orthodox methods for doing such things. Such information as there is available seems to have passed through several hands and in all probability was first presented to the public through a Spiritualistic publication. However, the particular effect referred to is neither new nor strange but has always been a feature in second sight acts and with clairvoyants. The reading of a book from memory is quite possible to persons of abnormal mind or special training in co-relative memorizing; a very clever system with surprising possibilities. There are many cases on record of persons who, having read a book once, could repeat every word and even tell where the punctuation was. The ability to recite entire chapters or parts of them is much more common, and is not difficult for trained minds such as are possessed by members of theatrical stock companies, who are oftentimes obliged to commit to memory simultaneously three or four plays, and this too while on the road. In order to be prepared to play one part in the afternoon and an entirely different one the same night, stock actors frequently have to do some marvellous memorization work on short notice. It is not an exception but the rule. They get long parts with from fifty to a hundred and fifty “sides,” each side containing from one to ten speeches. The foster-mother’s speech in “Common Clay” is over three pages, and the Duchess’ in the first act of Oscar Wilde’s “Lady Wildmere’s Fan” is about four pages. The well-known actress, Miss Beatrice Moreland, told me that she memorized them both in an hour and was almost letter perfect. The actor’s rule for memorizing parts is to take ten pages first and when they have been committed to memory take ten more. If such feats can be done as the result of training how easy it must be for an abnormal mind to memorize a book.
There comes to my mind a phenomenal memory feat by a blind slave boy called “Blind Tom.” He would listen while a composer played an original composition. As soon as the composer finished Tom seated himself at the piano and reproduced the entire piece with all the composer’s delicacy of shading and technique.
There is a case on record of a memory performance, I think in Rousseau’s time, where a poet read a piece of poetry, a long monody, to the King. At its conclusion the King said:
“Why, that is quite an old story, I have heard it before. As a matter of fact the man who related it to me is in my palace now; I will send for him and have him recite it for you.”
He spoke to a servant who left the room and returned in a few minutes with the memory man who stood in the center of the room and recited the entire poem. It appears that the King, wishing to mystify the poet, had the memory man hidden in a closet where he could hear the poem read.
Inaudi, a Frenchman, has given performances both in America and Europe in which he looks at a blackboard covered with figures written by a committee, then turns around and immediately tells correctly every figure on the board and its position; adds, subtracts, and multiplies them, with lightning-like rapidity, and all without looking at the board a second time. He makes no claim to psychic or clairvoyant powers but simply explains his wonderful performance as being the result of a photographic memory.
I might repeat such instances indefinitely but I think I have given enough to substantiate my claim of precedence for God’s natural laws and their marvellous, even incomprehensible working, over any so-called supernatural endowment of a class of people so thoroughly disqualified by all known laws of moral sociology, as many professional mediums are admitted to be by their most ardent supporters.
Even such an eminent mystifier as Robert Houdin can misjudge when it comes to fathoming the so-called manifestations of the professional medium. As I have explained in “The Unmasking of Robert Houdin,” page 291, he makes two flagrant errors in attempting to explain the Davenport Brothers’ trick. First he claims that “by dint of special practice on the part of the mediums, the thumb is made to lie flat in the hand, when the whole assumes a cylindrical form of scarcely greater diameter than the wrist.” Secondly, he declares that the Davenport Brothers possessed the power of seeing in the dark as the result of practice or training.