As my readers may surmise, there are two girls in this trick as well as two cabinets. While it is not always possible to find twin sisters so like that you cannot "tell one from both," these girls in their dress and make up must look as much alike as possible. When the first cabinet is rolled on the stage the "soldier" is inside, but, as you will remember, the curtains are down. As soon as the cabinet is placed in position at the back of the stage Mr. Soldierman steps out of the back door and stands on the ledge.
The two back doors are furnished on the outside with green curtains of the same shade as the background and the stage covering, and herein lies the whole secret of the trick, for the audience do not see through those doors, but merely think they do.
When the girl enters the cabinet she changes places with the soldier. Afterward when the curtains are down and the doors closed she re-enters the cabinet, where she remains till she releases the curtains when she is swinging aloft. With some slight modifications the trick might be arranged for the drawing-room.
Most of the cabinet tricks shown on the stage depend on a back door. One magician has used it for many years, and showed considerable ingenuity in the way in which he managed to introduce the person who was to produce the "manifestations." My reader must not understand by this that he was aided by a second person in all his cabinet manifestations. When he was tied with ropes and placed in the cabinet all the manifestations that took place there were produced by him without assistance from any one. In such cases he simply releases one hand, having secured slack while he was being tied up by the committee, and with this one hand he rings the bells, shakes the tambourines, and "raises ructions" generally. Later on, when he ties himself up and re-enters the cabinet, he is tied in such a way that he can free both hands, and is enabled to take off his own coat and put on some other man's, and do all the other "two-hand acts."
Lately he has taken to building his cabinet in full view of the audience so that there may be no possibility of concealing any one in it. He brings out a platform mounted on legs with heavy casters, puts up the back and sides, which are hinged together, and screws them in place; then adjusts the front in which are the doors. Gradually in the process of putting this together the cabinet is pushed about until for a moment it backs against the "flat." That moment is not lost, for the one who is to produce the manifestations steps through the scene on to the ledge back of the cabinet, and there clings. No sooner is the front up and secured than he enters by the back door. The cabinet is now turned around, and when it is again in position well "up stage," its occupant once more takes his place on the back ledge. Now the doors are opened and closed. The man re-enters, rings the bells, blows the horns, knocks over the chairs, and while the clatter is at its height, escapes to the back again just as the doors are opened for the last time.
The performer bows. The curtain falls.
Note.—Articles on this subject have appeared in the following numbers of the Round Table: Nos. 844, 852, 862, 866, 869.