The Magic Cave
You are seated in a parlor at night, with the lights turned low. In front of you, between the parlor and the room back of it, is an upright square of brightly burning lights, surrounding a perfectly black space. The magician stands in front of this, in his shirt sleeves, and after a few words of introduction proceeds to show the wonders of his magic cave. Showing you plainly that both hands are empty, he points with one finger to the box, where immediately appears a small white china bowl. Holding his empty hand over this bowl, some oranges and apples drop from his empty hand into the bowl. He removes the bowl from the black box, or cave, and hands its contents round to the audience. Receiving the bowl again, he tosses it into the cave, but it never reaches the floor—it disappears in midair.
The illusions he shows you are too many to retail at length. Objects appear and disappear. Heavy metal objects, such as forks, spoons and jackknives, which have been shown to the audience and which can have no strings attached to them, fly about in the box at the will of the operator. One thing changes to another and back again, and black art reigns supreme.
Now all this "magic" is very simple and requires no more skill to prepare or execute than any clever boy or girl of fourteen may possess. It is based on the performance of the famous Hermann, and relies on a principle of optics for its success. To prepare such a magic cave, the requisites are a large soap box, a few simple tools, some black paint, some black cloth, and plenty of candles.
The box must be altered first. One end is removed, and a slit, one-third of the length from the remaining end, cut in one side. This slit should be as long as the width of the box and about five inches wide. On either side of the box, half way from open end to closed end, should be cut a hole, just large enough to comfortably admit a hand and arm.
Next, the box should be painted black both inside and out, and finally lined inside with black cloth. This lining must be done neatly-no folds must show and no heads of tacks. The interior must be a dead black. The box is painted black first so that the cloth used need not be very heavy; but if the cloth be sufficiently thick, no painting inside is required. The whole inside is to be cloth-lined, floor, top, sides and end.
Next, the illumination in front must be arranged. If you can have a plumber make you a square frame of gas-piping, with tiny holes all along it for the gas to escape and be lit, and connect this by means of a rubber tube to the gas in the house, so much the better; but a plentiful supply of short candles will do just as well, although a little more trouble. The candles must be close together and arranged on little brackets around the whole front of the "cave" (see small cut), and should have little pieces of bright tin behind them, to throw the light toward the audience. The whole function of these candles is to dazzle the eyes of the spectators, heighten the illusion, and prevent them seeing very far into the black box.
Finally, you must have an assistant, who must be provided with either black gloves or black bags to go over his hands and arms, and several black drop curtains, attached to sticks greater in length than the width of the box, which are let down through the slit in the top.