Here is an illustration of a complicated series of questions, and the reader will see at once that the answering is very simple:
What is in my hand? A pin.
What is the metal? Gold.
Any stone? Amethyst.
What have I now? Money.
You say I have money; but you don’t say the kind? A florin.
Can you tell me again? A shilling.
From the illustrations I have given above, the reader will perceive that, provided a large and well-selected assortment of questions, corresponding with replies, be agreed upon, and well known by the two confederates, almost any question may be answered and any article known, together with its properties, color, contents, etc.
Another exhibition of clairvoyance—the reading of writing sealed up and unopened—adds greatly to the mystery of the performance; but how this is done can be easily explained. Previous to going on the stage, a sentence is selected, and written in blacklead on a piece of paper. During the performance similar pieces of paper are handed round to several of the audience, who are requested to write a sentence thereon. These papers are sealed similarly to the prepared one, and placed in a hat. The professor then pretends to select one at random, after having shaken up the papers; but he really takes up the one he had already in his hand. The lady clairvoyant is then requested to read a sentence, which, of course, she can easily do. The paper is then handed to one of the audience and to their astonishment it is found to have been the actual sentence written. It will be understood that each writer of a sentence is ignorant of what another has written, and the given sentence is therefore thought to have been written by one of the audience. This suspicion may be heightened by the queer method of spelling, or the character of the caligraphy; it may be made still more astounding by writing the sentence in a foreign language with a slight mistake in spelling, or grammar, upon which the clairvoyant can comment in her reply, and thus acquire a reputation for scholarly and linguistic attainments. The same means are resorted to in the adding up of a sum. The figures are all prepared behind the stage, and the bona fide sums given by the audience are never the ones answered by the clairvoyant. I think I have given, or I hope I have, a clear and full explanation of clairvoyance or second sight, and the reader may, by a little practice, become as perfect in this special branch of magic as the mysterious lady—Heller—Miss Anderson, Dr. Lynn, and a host of others, who have mystified and bewildered thousands of wondering spectators.
CHAPTER VII.
Spiritualism.
The belief in the materialization of spirits, and the visits of spiritual inhabitants of another world to the scene of their mortal sojourn for the sole object of giving specimens of their caligraphy on slates and ceilings, rapping and playing upon tambourines, sealed accordions, guitars, and so forth, affords another proof that there are no bounds to human credulity and stupidity.
A worthy doctor of philosophy, only recently deceased, said in my hearing, while speaking of the gross ignorance that prevailed among believers in spiritualism, that if a man stood in the middle of the road with a crowd of people round him, and asserted, with well-worded sentences and an apparent earnestness and belief on his own part, that two and two were five, he would find some among the crowd to believe him. Perhaps the doctor went a little too far in his observation, but it is, nevertheless, almost incredible that a large number of persons can be so bigoted and thick-headed as to persist in their belief in spiritualism when medium after medium has been most unequivocally found to be conjuror, trickster, and swindler. These conjurors and tricksters are not men who practise their art of deceiving on the stage in a legitimate manner, but they are men who pander to the credulity, bigotry, and fanaticism of the imbecile, obtuse, and weak-minded person who believe in spirit land, by claiming the power of recalling from that unknown region to which the soul is supposed to take its flight when it has shuffled off its mortal coil, those beings who have gone from earth never to return again, except by the agency of these mediums. In asserting their power of “calling up the spirits from the vasty deep,” or from the sky, they offer as proof of their claim to be believed certain tests, which have been, and which I will show are, simply the hanky-panky tricks of the prestidigitateur and magician. The credulous followers of these mediums cannot or will not see the absurdity of bringing souls from the “world of spirits” merely to answer idiotic questions, and to perform such antics as even a wild and unrestrained boy would not be mad enough to do; but they believe the assertions of the mediums simply because the tests which are applied to them consist of something more material and tangible than aërial nothings, and appear to be marvellous and beyond the power of the human mind to understand.
Have these spiritualists never witnessed the performance of a clever conjuror who confesses that all his tricks are worked by mechanical means and sleight of hand? or have they never seen apparent wonders performed, the mystery of which they could not unravel? They must have done so, and yet we have never once heard such men as Heller, Houdin, Professor Anderson, Maskelyne and Cooke, assert that their performances or manifestations were the works of materialized spirits.