Professor Hoffmann

“ The power, when blindfold, to discriminate things unseen, and promiscuously pick from a crowd of persons, and name miscellaneous and out-of-the-way articles, has been performed so cleverly that the greatest surprise and wonder has been created in the minds of even the most intelligent spectators. But like everything else to which the term magic has been and is applied, the wonderful and mysterious are only the simple and the commonplace, and the credulity of the audience leads to the merest trickery, to that marvel and wonder which surrounds a feat of legerdemain or clairvoyance ”

“ Gathering new strength from the encouragement which his friends offer him by word and look, he casts towards them a glance which seems to say, ‘You shall see what the son of the desert can do.’ Once more he bends over the chest, his nervous hands grip the handle, and his legs, planted one on each side of the chest like two columns of bronze, serve as a fulcrum for the mighty effort which he is about to make. It seems almost impossible but that under such a strain the box must fly to pieces. ”

“ If a performer has sufficient imaginative faculty to do this—if he can so enter into the spirit of his part, as himself to believe in the marvels he professes, he will achieve an almost unlimited mastery over the imaginations of his audience.
As we have already intimated, each individual illusion should have its appropriate words and gestures—in technical language, its “patter,” or “boniment”—carefully arranged and rehearsed, so as to produce the maximum of effect. These are, in truth, the very life of the trick. ”

“ The victim makes a rush behind the curtains, no doubt frightened that the threat would be duly executed, but is brought out and made to stand still while the exhibitor coolly cuts off an arm and then a leg. The frightened, trembling subject of the professor’s carving operations is an assistant, who takes good care to be the first on the stage when a person among the audience is requested to step up and be carved. When he rushes off behind the curtains, it is to affix to one shoulder and thigh a dummy arm and leg, while his real limbs remain behind the curtains reclining upon rests. ”

“ To the eyes of the spectators, who believe that the balls are really dropped into the hat, the effect will be exactly as if new balls, by some mysterious process of reproduction, came under the cups at each time of raising them. When you think your audience are sufficiently astonished, you remark, “I think we have about enough now; the hat is getting rather heavy. Will some one hold a handkerchief to receive the balls?” When the handkerchief is spread out, you carefully turn over the hat, and the general astonishment will be intensified at discovering that it contains nothing. ”

“ It is by no means uncommon to see a performer, after having apparently dropped two or three coins into the hat in the ordinary way, pretend to pass in one or more through the side or crown. This produces a momentary effect, but it is an effect purchased at the cost of enabling an acute spectator to infer, with logical certainty, that the coin seen in the right hand was not the same that was, the moment afterwards, heard to chink within the hat; and this furnishes a distinct clue to the secret of the trick. ”

“ Taking a third ball in your left hand, you hold it as before, but, as if through carelessness or clumsiness, allow it to be seen for a moment above the edge of the table. When you raise the third cup, you move it behind the table as before, and make a feint of introducing the ball which the spectators have just seen, but really let it drop on the servante, and replace the cup empty. A murmur from the audience will quickly apprise you that they have, as they imagine, found you out. ”

“ But so blind is poor human nature that the clever conjuror can always select his man for “forcing a card upon him,” even though he makes his dupe believe he has selected one at his own will and choice. At the request of a large number of friends, I will conclude this volume by giving a few tricks which may be performed after a very little practice by anybody who will take a little trouble, and for the execution of which no, or very little, apparatus will be required—at any rate, only such as can be obtained either in any ordinary house, or at a very trifling expense. ”

“ The idea of the flower, warmed into bloom under a fair lady’s breath, is so poetical that it seems quite a pity to be obliged to confess that the rose is an artificial one, made chiefly of tin, and that its petals, normally held open by the action of a spring, are, when the flower is first brought on, kept closed by a sliding ring or collar upon the stalk, again re-opening as this collar is drawn back by the magician’s fingers. ”

“ If you are using an ordinary table, the most effective mode of finishing the trick is as follows:—Walk boldly to the table, and pick up with the right hand (in which the card actually thought of is palmed) the card lying on the table, and, without looking at it yourself, hold it towards your audience, remarking, “Here it is, you see, the ace of spades.” The card being, in truth, a totally different one (say the seven of diamonds) , the audience naturally imagine that the trick has broken down, and a derisive murmur apprises you of the fact. ”

“ The movement is so instantaneous that the quickest eye cannot follow it, and the explosion of the pistol at the same moment aids still further to baffle the vigilance of the spectators, to whom it appears as if the borrowed watch had really passed from the pistol to the face of the target. ”

“ The hands naturally sink in the act of catching the ball; and after having caught it once or twice, the performer, as he lowers them, drops it on the servante, immediately raising them again with the action of throwing up the ball, taking care to follow it with the eyes in its imaginary flight. If this is done neatly, the eyes of the spectators will instinctively travel in the same direction, and the effect to them will be as if the ball vanished at the highest point of its upward flight, instead of disappearing, as it really does, at the moment of reaching the hands in its fall. ”

“ Again, if the performer has occasion for an egg or lemon in the course of a trick, it greatly enhances the effect, if instead of having the necessary article brought in by his assistant, he produces it himself from a lady’s muff, or from the whiskers of a male spectator. These little matters, though small in themselves, tend to keep alive the attention of the audience, and to create a sort of magical atmosphere, which will aid materially in disposing the spectators to receive with due respect the occult pretensions of the performer. ”

“ So quickly is this done that the audience cannot but believe that the arm and leg are the real flesh and blood contingents to the human frame. The professor carefully amputates the false arm and leg. Of course he can as readily replace the limbs by simply gliding the false limbs through the curtains, and releasing the bona fide leg and arm from their constrained and awkward position. ”

“ Scientific inquiry—that broom that has swept away so many superstitions—has done its work well, and it cannot be long before the bigoted believers in the so-called “manifestation” of beings in another and unknown world will be looked upon, even by those whose belief in them is strongest, as the mechanical hanky-panky tricks of clever and astute conjurors, who feed upon the credulity and simplicity of their tools and followers. ”

“ The audience, seeing you raise the wrong cup, are more and more confirmed in their suspicion. “Not that one, the other,” they exclaim. You next raise B, the ball in which also does not fall, for the reason already stated. “No, no,” the audience shout, “the other cup, the end one.” “You are really very obstinate, gentlemen,” you reply, “but pray satisfy yourselves,” turning over A as you speak, and showing the inside, which is manifestly empty, and your critics rapidly subside. Meanwhile, you drop your left hand to the servante, and secretly take from it two similar balls. ”

“ Every time he pronounces the mystic “Pass!” or touches an object with his wand to effect some pretended transformation,503 he should force himself to forget the commonplace expedients by which the result is really attained, and to believe that the effect is produced by a genuine magical process. When he goes through the motion of passing a coin from the right hand to the left, he should have imagination enough to persuade himself, for the moment, that the coin has really been transferred as it appears to be. ”

“ That the speech is spoken by a human voice there is no doubt; but how is a head to be contrived which, being detached from anything like a body, confined in a case, which it completely fills, and placed on a bare-legged table, will accompany a speech, that apparently proceeds from its lips, with a strictly appropriate movement of the mouth, and a play of the countenance that is the reverse of mechanical? ”

“ On his doing so, the performer, again shaking out the handkerchief, and showing both sides of it to prove it empty, spreads it over the back of the victim. Again he taps with his wand, which, striking the ring through the handkerchief, causes an unmistakeable hard sound to be heard; and then grasping the ring as before through the handkerchief, he deliberately raises it up in a horizontal position, the effect being as if the glass had again returned to the handkerchief. He then says, “I don’t think I will trouble this gentleman again; he is too much of a conjuror himself;” ”

“ The arrangement which we ourselves prefer, where practicable, is to have the thread drawn by an assistant, who may either be placed behind a screen, or may even stand in full view of the audience, so long as he is at some little distance from the table. The silk thread is quite invisible, if only you have a tolerably dark background. The only portion as to which you need feel any anxiety is that immediately connected with the cards. To conceal this it is well, if you use a special table, to have a small hole bored in the top, through which the thread may pass. ”

“ In working the trick the performer has only to take care to hold the watch in a tolerably straight line between the pocket and the audience, when, the line in which the sound travels being the same as if it actually came from the watch, it will be almost impossible to detect the deception. ”

“ This is made absolutely certain by the use of what is called a “forcing pack”—i.e., a pack in which all the cards are alike. Thus, if the knave of hearts is the card to be drawn, the whole pack will consist of knaves of hearts, and the drawer may therefore do his utmost to exercise a free choice, but the card which he draws will certainly be the knave of hearts, and no other. Where more than one card is to be drawn, as, for instance, in the well-known trick of the “rising cards,” the pack may consist, instead of similar cards throughout, of groups of two or more particular cards. ”