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Herr Willmann describes practically the same trick under the title “Spirit box,” designed to prove the permeability of matter. A medium is placed in the box, and after some hocus-pocus the manager reopens it and declares it to be empty; for the purpose of proving his assertion he turns it over toward the public, and when the lid is opened, the medium, who remains all the while in his place, has become invisible, because he is hidden by the interior part of the double wall, which now seems to be the bottom of the box. The box stands upon a podium, in order to show that the medium could not have escaped through the floor. The adjoined illustration reveals the secret of the trick, the explanation of which is as simple as the effect is surprising.
On stages which allow the prestidigitateur to use traps, a trunk is placed so as to allow the prisoner to escape through the floor. The movable wall of the trunk in such a case swings round an axis which lies parallel with the rope that is afterwards fastened around the trunk. The movable wall in the trunk connects with a trap in the floor, and while visitors from the audience closely watch the fastening, the enclosed person makes his escape with the greatest ease.
THE MYSTERIOUS TRUNK OPERATED THROUGH A TRAP IN THE STAGE.
Kellar is an expert in the rope-tying business, which the notorious Davenport Brothers exploited under the guise of spiritism. When I first saw Kellar at Ford’s Opera House, Washington, D. C., in February, 1879, his cabinet act, a burlesque on the Davenport séance, was a feature of his entertainment. After playing a disastrous engagement in Philadelphia, he came to Washington, where his business proved no better, and being “flat broke,” as he expressed it, he advertised in sheer desperation a Sunday night lecture on Spiritualism, to be delivered at the old National Theatre. The theatre and advertising were furnished by Mr. Ford, who took half of the gross receipts. I was present on the occasion and recall the excitement. Everything passed off without special incident, until the magician came to the Davenport cabinet test. At this juncture a venerable gentleman arose in the audience and challenged Kellar to permit him to do the tying in the same manner that he had tied the Davenports years before. The gentleman was very much in earnest and remarked: “If you fail to get {249} loose when tied, you are a colossal humbug; if you do get loose, it will be by spirit agency.” Kellar joyfully accepted the challenge. The old gentleman came upon the stage and pinioned the magician’s hands behind his back with many intricate and subtle knots. So tightly did he draw the rope that sympathetic {250} people in the theatre cried, “Shame.” Having completed his job, he turned to the spectators with a self-satisfied look on his face, as much as to say, “I have trapped the fox.” But he reckoned without his host. No sooner was his back turned to the magician than the latter slipped one hand from its lashings and tapped the skeptic on the shoulder. “If you have two of my hands tied behind my back,” said Kellar, “I must have been royally endowed by Nature with a third hand.”
Thunders of applause greeted the scene. Even ladies rose from their seats and cheered. “Bravo, Kellar!” was heard on all sides. The old gentleman joined in the demonstration, and acknowledged himself beaten. This episode caused so great a sensation in Washington that two more Sunday evening lectures were given to crowded houses, and Kellar was enabled to pay his debts and get out of town.
It is now pretty well known to conjurers that the Davenports accomplished their feats by secretly taking up slack in the rope while it was being tied, thereby getting a loop hole in the bonds through which to work one hand loose. Frequently they cut the cords with knives secreted up their sleeves, and after the alleged spirit manifestations were gone through with, exchanged the cut ropes for genuine ones, and came out of the cabinet with these, making the spectators believe that some occult agency had freed them from the knots.
There is a conjurer named Joad Heteb who claims to have dropped from the eye of the Sphinx in the form of a tear, and was immediately metamorphosed into the Wizard of the Pyramids. According to his account the spirits of the sorcerers and soothsayers of the olden Pharaohs left their rock-cut tombs and painted mummy-cases to be present at the event. Joad Heteb has a clever press-agent. If Joad fell from the Sphinx’s eye in the shape of a tear, Kellar must have dropped from the fabled monster’s mouth in the form of a word, and that word “Mystery.” Kellar is ably assisted by Herr Valadon, an Anglo-German professor of legerdemain, formerly of Egyptian Hall, London. Valadon, upon his entrance on the stage, takes off his gloves, vanishes them, by apparently throwing {251} them in the air, whereupon a white dove flutters upwards. It is a very pretty effect.
