There are some drums (of an inferior character) made with one hammer only; such hammer being arranged for the roll. Where it is desired to give a single rap, this may be effected by pressing and instantly releasing the stud with a light, quick touch; but some little dexterity is required.
In the case of all these appliances for magically answering questions, it is necessary that the assistant who has the control of the apparatus should be in such a position as to distinctly hear the questions asked. In fortune-telling matters the answer may generally be left to his own discretion; but for indicating what card is chosen, etc., it is necessary either that an agreed card be forced, or that a carefully arranged code of verbal signals should be employed, whereby the form of the question may itself indicate the proper answer.[P] Considerable fun may be caused by the magician selecting an evidently “engaged” couple, and after asking how many months it will be before they are married, etc., inquiring, in a stage whisper, how many children they are destined to be blest with. The drum raps steadily up to (say) five, and this is accepted as the answer, when, after a moment’s pause, two more raps are heard in quick succession. This alarming omen is received with general laughter, amid which the drum gives another rap, and then another, continuing until the performer, scandalized at its behaviour, unhooks it from the cords, and carries it, still rapping, off the stage. This last effect is wholly independent of electricity, being produced by the performer tapping with his fingers that end of the drum which for the time being is farthest from the audience.
[P] This is the principle of the well-known “second sight” trick, a detailed explanation of which we are compelled from considerations of space to omit, the system, as perfected by Robert-Houdin and others, being so elaborate, that an independent treatise would be needed to do it justice. An admirable account of the system, as applied to the French language, will be found in a work by F. A. Gandon, “La seconde vue dévoilée,” published in Paris in 1849.
There are some few other tricks performed by the aid of electricity, but any one who understands the principle of those above described may make a very shrewd guess at the working of the remainder. All tricks of this class, though ingenious and effective, are open to one or two serious objections. In the first place, the apparatus is very costly, and, secondly, they are unpleasantly liable, from the nicety of their mechanism and the absolute necessity of perfect electrical connection in all their parts, to hang fire at the critical moment, and leave the operator in a very embarrassing position. Imagine the feelings of a performer who, having just introduced his wonderful drum, which is to display unheard-of oracular powers, finds that the instrument remains as mute as the celebrated harp in Tara’s halls, and refuses to bear out, in the smallest degree, his grandiloquent assertions. Yet this unpleasant result may occur at any time from the simple breaking of a wire, or some even slighter cause. This, it appears to us, is a serious drawback to electrical tricks, though where they are exhibited at their best no illusions are more beautiful, or have more of genuine magic about them.
Fig. 311.
We should mention, before quitting the subject of these tricks, that in order to avoid the trouble and expense of fixing the necessary conducting wires in a building not specially appropriated to magical performances, an upright brass rod (which may be detached at pleasure) is sometimes fitted on each side of the performer’s table (see [Fig. 311]), and the apparatus in use (drum, bell, cash-box, etc.) is suspended by appropriate cords between these rods. The conducting wires are connected within the table with the lower ends of the brass uprights, and thence pass down its hinder legs to the battery behind the scenes. There are many considerations of convenience in favour of this arrangement, but the tricks performed are less effective than where the apparatus is hung fairly from the ceiling, and apparently out of all possible reach of mechanical influence.
The Aërial Suspension.—This is a very old trick, performed originally by the Indian jugglers, who kept the modus operandi a profound secret. The ingenuity, however, of Robert-Houdin penetrated the mystery, and in 1849 made it a special feature of his séances fantastiques. At that time the public mind was much interested in the anæsthetic qualities of ether, which had then recently been discovered. Robert-Houdin manipulated this fact into a valuable advertisement. He gave out that he had discovered in the popular anæsthetic a still more marvellous property, viz., that when inhaled under certain conditions, it neutralized the attraction of gravitation in the person inhaling it, who became, for the time being, light as air. In proof of this, he brought forward his youngest son, then a child of ten or thereabouts, and after having made him smell at a small phial, really empty, but supposed to contain ether, caused him to recline in mid-air, with no other support than that afforded by, to all appearance, an ordinary walking-stick, placed in a vertical position under his right elbow. It is characteristic of Robert-Houdin’s minute attention to the mise en scène of a trick, that while his son sniffed at the empty bottle, his assistant, behind the scenes, poured genuine ether upon a hot shovel, so that the fumes, reaching the nostrils of the audience, might prove, indirectly but convincingly, that ether was really employed. After the retirement of Robert-Houdin from the stage, the trick fell comparatively out of notice, till it was revived in a new form by the Fakir of Oolu (Professor Sylvester) in England, and contemporaneously by De Vere on the Continent. A full-grown young lady was in this case the subject of the illusion, and was made, while still suspended in air, to assume various costumes and characters. The illusion, in this new form, took the fancy of the public, and brought forth a host of imitators; but few have presented it with the same completeness as the two performers named. For a time it produced quite a marked sensation, equal crowds thronging to see Sylvester in London, and De Vere in Paris, St. Petersburg, Brussels, Pesth, Dresden, Strasburg, and other continental cities. Recent mechanical improvements, to which the last-named Professor has materially contributed, have greatly heightened the effect of the trick—the lady being made to rise spontaneously from the perpendicular to the horizontal position, and to continue to float in the air after her last ostensible support has been removed.
Fig. 312.