A story like this gives the magician's assistant plenty of time to work the trick. Sometimes a magician whose confidence in his assistant is not strong, or whose paraphernalia is limited, will have only the box, and will satisfy himself with merely "tying" his assistant in a sack on top of the box. This way the trick is surer and a great deal easier than when the basket is used.
CHAPTER XXXII.
VENTRILOQUISM.
All who have heard Prof. Kennedy or Val Vose with their funny little figures have wondered how they managed to produce such an effect upon their audience—to completely delude them into the belief that the speech came from the moving lips of the little wooden heads and not from the closed and motionless labials of the ventriloquists. Both gentlemen are thoroughly familiar with their art, and the entertainment they give may be taken as a sample of the possibilities of ventriloquism. The history of the art goes back to Biblical times, but not until the eighteenth century have we anecdotes of the remarkable performances of men endowed with the gift. The earliest notice of the illusion, as carried out in modern times, has reference to Louis Brabant valet de chambre to Francis I. Having been rejected by the parents of a rich heiress he wished to wed, he waited until the father was dead; then he visited the widow, whom he caused to hear the voice of her husband coming from above commanding her to give their daughter in marriage to Louis, that he (the father) might be relieved from purgatory. The widow was only too glad to comply. Now, Louis wanted a wedding portion, so he went to one Cornu, a rich, miserly, and usurious banker at Lyons, whom he terrified into giving him ten thousand crowns by the old trick of parent and purgatory.
The works of M. L'Abbe La Chapelle, issued 1772, contain descriptions of the ventriloquial achievements of Baron Mengen at Vienna; and those of M. St. Gille, near Paris, are equally interesting and astonishing. The former ingeniously constructed a doll with movable lips, which he could readily control by a movement of the fingers under the dress; and with this automaton he was accustomed to hold humorous and satirical dialogues. He ascribed proficiency in his art to the frequent gratification of a propensity for counterfeiting the cries of the lower animals, and the voices of persons with whom he was in contact.
La Chapelle, having heard many surprising circumstances related concerning one M. St. Gille, a grocer at St. Germainen-Laye, near Paris, whose powers as a ventriloquist had given occasion to many singular and diverting scenes, formed the resolution of seeing him. Being seated with him on the opposite side of a fire, in a parlor on the ground floor, and very attentively observing him, the Abbe, after half an hour's conversation with M. St. Gille, heard himself called, on a sudden, by his name and title, in a voice that seemed to come from the roof of a house at a distance; and whilst he was pointing to the house from which the voice had appeared to him to proceed, he was yet more surprised at hearing the words, "it was not from that quarter," apparently in the same kind of voice as before, but which now seemed to issue from under the earth at one of the corners of the room. In short, this fictitious voice played, as it were, everywhere about him, and seemed to proceed from any quarter or distance from which the operator chose to transmit it to him. To the Abbe, though conscious that the voice proceeded from the mouth of M. St. Gille, he appeared absolutely mute while he was exercising his talent; nor could any change in his countenance be discovered. But he observed that M. St. Gille presented only the profile of his face to him while he was speaking as a ventriloquist.
On another occasion, M. St. Gille sought for shelter from a storm in a neighboring convent; and finding the community in mourning, and inquiring the cause, he was told that one of their body, much esteemed by them, had lately died. Some of their religious brethren attended him to the church, and showing him the tomb of their deceased brother, spoke very feelingly of the scanty honors that had been bestowed on his memory, when suddenly a voice was heard, apparently proceeding from the roof of the choir, lamenting the situation of the defunct in purgatory, and reproaching the brotherhood with their want of zeal on his account. The whole community being afterwards convened in the church, the voice from the roof renewed its lamentations and reproaches, and the whole convent fell on their faces, and vowed a solemn reparation. Accordingly, they first chanted a De profundis in full choir; during the intervals of which the ghost occasionally expressed the comfort he received from their pious exercises and ejaculations in his behalf. The prior, when this religious service was concluded, entered into a serious conversation with M. St. Gille, and inveighed against the incredulity of our modern sceptics and pretended philosophers on the article of ghosts and apparitions; and St. Gille found it difficult to convince the fathers that the whole was a deception.
M. Alexandre, the noted ventriloquist, had an extraordinary facility in counterfeiting the faces of other people. At Abbotsford, during a visit there, he actually sat to a sculptor five times in the character of a noted clergyman, with whose real features the sculptor was well acquainted. When the sittings were closed and the bust modelled, the mimic cast off his wig and assumed dress, and appeared with his own natural countenance, to the terror almost of the sculptor, and to the great amusement of Sir Walter Scott and others who had been in the secret.
Of this most celebrated ventriloquist it is related that on one occasion he was passing along the Strand, when a friend desired a specimen of his abilities. At this instant a load of hay was passing along near Temple Bar, when Alexandre called attention to the suffocating cries of a man in the centre of the hay. A crowd gathered round and stopped the astonished carter, and demanded why he was carrying a fellow-creature in his hay. The complaints and cries of the smothered man now became painful, and there was every reason to believe that he was dying. The crowd, regardless of the stoppage to the traffic, instantly proceeded to unload the hay into the street. The smothered voice urged them to make haste; but the feelings of the people may be imagined when the cart was empty and nobody was found, while Alexandre and his friend walked off laughing at the unexpected results of their trick.