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Feats of modern magicians—Their wonders explained—The snake-charmers of India—A Chinese delusion—The magician of Cairo.

Wonder-workers have often appeared. Some of them have lately repeated their most remarkable feats in London and various places in England, varied by others of inferior interest. Large and astonished assemblies have witnessed their performance, and public journals have described them as absolutely “inexplicable.” And yet, though the writer has no personal acquaintance with any modern “magician,” he has no doubt that all their feats may be accounted for, from sleight-of-hand, confederacy, ingenious contrivance, or the application of some natural law. A few illustrations shall now be given.

Many delusions are entirely dependent on sleight-of-hand; a rapidity of manipulation being attained by long practice, as in the marvellous movements of the fingers of a highly accomplished instrumental performer; while the power may become so great as to defy the observation of the acutest vision. The late Mr. Walker, minister at Demattar, in the Mears, told sir Walter Scott of a young country girl, who threw turf, stones, and other missiles, with such dexterity, that it was, for a time, impossible to ascertain the agency employed in the disturbances of which she was the sole cause.

A friend of the writer has a remarkable nicety of touch, and, at pleasure, a rapid movement of the hands, by which he can rival many magical feats. Thus he conveys balls under cups, and appears to change them into fruit, to the astonishment of lookers-on. He also takes two horn cups of exactly the same size, and produces the impression that he causes one to fall through the other, when this is impossible, and all that is done is effected by dexterous and rapid manipulation, illustrating the proverb, “The hand is quicker than the eye.”

Many astounding feats, which form a part of all popular magical exhibitions, are performed by this leger-de-main. Apparently, the performer receives a lady’s wedding-ring and breaks it in pieces; burns a five-pound note handed to him by a spectator; reduces a hat to a hideous shape; or crushes a bonnet into fragments, and then restores them uninjured to the respective parties, amidst the acclamations of the multitude. But all that is done is with indescribable rapidity to substitute articles of his own to undergo the process of destruction, and, at the right moment, to exhibit those which have been presented by the spectators, and are preserved in safety.

Another cause of wonderment is confederacy. A modern performer has been accustomed to hand a box to one of his audience, requesting that in it might be placed any article that he had, and that it might be passed on from one to another for the same purpose. While this has been done, he has proceeded to his table, and apparently waited the filling of the box. At length, while the box has been held up at a distance, he has placed his rod to his eye and described the collection that has been made. He has said, perhaps, “I can see in that box a piece of ribbon, a lozenge, a few grains, part, I dare say, of a pinch of snuff, and a lady’s card; I will try and read it—Miss—Clara—Henderson;” and so he passes through the chief part of the series. And yet, as his patrons look on with astonishment, they do not think of what is most likely to be the fact, that a confederate, sitting as one of the audience, made a list of the articles as they were deposited in the box, and despatched it in portions or altogether, so that their names might reach the eye of the performer from some part of his table.

A third means of wonder-working is that of ingenious contrivance. We will illustrate this by two popular feats. A number of handkerchiefs taken from the audience by more than one popular performer, were placed in a small washing-tub, into which water was poured, and they were washed for a few minutes. They were then placed in a vessel like the figure, below, and immediately afterwards the performer said to the persons in front: “I will give you these;” and taking off the top, when he was expected to throw out the wet handkerchiefs, all that fell was a number of flowers. He now brought out a box, which he opened, and showed it to be empty; then shutting it, and uttering a few cabalistic words, he opened it again, and there were the handkerchiefs, all dry, folded, and scented, which he distributed to their respective claimants.

A

B

Another experiment of a popular performer was called “coffee for the million.” Producing a vessel like the diagram A; the performer filled it with unground coffee, and placing it under a cover B, he said, “There, when you have done that, let it simmer for three-quarters-of-an hour; but, perhaps, you will not like to wait so long; here then it is;” and on removing the cover, the vessel appeared full of hot liquid coffee. In another vessel of the same kind he obtained lump-sugar from rape-seed; and in a third, warm milk from horse-beans; and pouring out the coffee into cups, sent them round to regale his auditory, amidst their loud and approving shouts at so great a transformation.

As these feats are the result of considerable ingenuity, it is probable that the devices employed would not readily occur to spectators in general, while they would utterly escape those whose object is merely amusement, and who, if they thought at all, would be likely to describe the result as supernatural. We proceed, then, to the unravelling of the mystery. Let it be observed, in reference to the first experiment, that a number of handkerchiefs are collected in the early part of the evening for various illusions, and that many of them appear for a time on the performer’s table. Provided with a collection of these articles, from the handsome silk handkerchief to one trimmed with lace, used by a fashionable lady, he could easily substitute his own of the same kind for those of his auditory, as the curtain falls, according to the arrangements of the evening, between the collection of the handkerchiefs and the subsequent process. His own handkerchiefs, therefore, are washed and placed in the vase already described; and the so-called change into flowers is nothing more than the retention of the handkerchiefs in the lower part of the apparatus, which the figure illustrates, while the upper part holds the flowers till they are scattered among the spectators. Meanwhile, all that is required is done to their handkerchiefs. It is not absolutely necessary that they should be washed; for folding, pressing, and a little eau-de-Cologne, would complete the preparation; but granting that they are washed, there is still no difficulty, though this mystifies the spectators, who have the idea that drying is a long affair; for it may be effected in a minute or two by a machine that is readily obtained. The box brought out has them deposited in it, but as it is double, one interior is first shown, which, of course, contains nothing, for the inner drawer holding the handkerchiefs remains in the case; but when a few sounds are uttered and the professor touches a secret spring behind, which disengages the inner box, he draws it out with the outer one; and presents the handkerchiefs to the audience. In the diagram A, the box is shown as empty. At B, we have a representation of the box containing the handkerchiefs. It is only necessary to add that the box is very nicely made; the part within the other drawn out to the end, defies detection.

The preparation of coffee, milk, and sugar, may be easily explained; for if the vessels containing respectively the unground coffee, the rape-seed, and the horse-beans, always placed under a cover, be put on a part of the table having a circular trap-door—and for this there is full provision in the cover of the table extending to the floor—a confederate may readily substitute one for the other.

The Rev. W. Arthur, in his work on the Mysore, directs us to results of a different kind:—“Whilst walking in the verandah,” he says, “some snake-charmers approached, and forthwith began to show us their skill. They produced several bags and baskets, containing serpents of the most poisonous kind—the cobra di capello; then blew upon an instrument shaped like a cocoa-nut, with a short tube inserted, and producing music closely allied to that of the bag-pipe. The animals were brought forth, raised themselves to the music, spread out their head, showing the spectacle mask fully distended, and waved about with considerable grace, and little appearance of venom. The men coquetted with them, and coiled them about their persons, without any sign of either dislike or fear. This power of dealing with creatures so deadly is ascribed by the natives to magic. Europeans generally account for it by saying that the fangs are extracted. But the most reasonable explanation seems to be, that when the snake is first caught, by a dexterous movement of the charmer, the hand is slipped along the body, until it reaches the neck, which he presses so firmly, as to compel an ejection of the virus; thus destroying, for a time, all power to harm; and that this operation is repeated as often as is necessary, to prevent the dangerous accumulation. If this be true—and I believe it is—nothing is necessary to the safe handling of these reptiles, but a knowledge of the laws which regulate the venomous secretion. The wonder seems to lie in the power they possess of attracting the snakes by their rude music, and seizing them in the first instance. But enough is known to make it evident that, in what all natives and many Europeans regard as mysterious and magical, there is nothing but experience, tact, and courage.”

A strange and repulsive feat is thus described by the Rev. G. Smith, in his recent work on “China.” “Aquei conducted us into a room, where he was sitting with his two wives, handsomely attired, looking from a window on the crowd assembled in the street to witness the performances of a native juggler. The latter, after haranguing the crowd with much animation in the Nanking dialect, (as is usual with actors,) proceeded to one part of the crowd, and took thence a child, apparently five or six years old, who, with struggling resistance, was led into the centre of the circle. The man then, with impassioned gesture, violently threw the child on a wooden stool, and, placing him on his back, flourished over him a large knife; the child all the time sobbing and crying as if from fright. Two or three older men from the crowd approached, with earnest remonstrances against the threatened deed of violence. For a time, he desisted, but, soon after, returning to the child, who was still uttering most pitiable cries, he placed him with his back upwards, and, notwithstanding the violent protests of the seniors, he suddenly dashed the knife into the back of the child’s neck, which it appeared to enter till it had almost divided it from the head; the blood meanwhile flowing copiously from the wound, and streaming to the ground, and over the hands of the man. The struggle of the child grew more and more feeble, and at last altogether ceased. The man then arose, leaving the knife firmly fixed in the child’s neck. Copper cash was then thrown liberally into the ring, for the benefit of the principal actors. These were collected by assistants, all of them viewing the influx of the coins with great delight, and bowing continually to the spectators, and reiterating the words, ‘To seoz,’ ‘Many thanks.’ After a time, the man proceeded towards the corpse, pronounced a few words, took away the knife, and called aloud to the child. Soon there appeared the signs of returning animation. The stiffness of death gradually relaxed, and at last he stood up among the eager crowd, who closed around him, and bountifully rewarded him with cash. The performance was evidently one which excited delight in the bystanders, who, by their continued shouts, showed their approbation of the acting.”

It is almost superfluous to add, that the deception consisted in the construction of the blade and the handle of the knife, so that, by making a sawing motion on the throat of the child, a stream of coloured liquid, resembling blood, is pumped out; a little acting on the part of the performer and the child is amply sufficient for all the rest.

Within the last few years, we have had accounts of a magician in Egypt, first described in a valuable work on that country by Mr. Lane, which produced an extraordinary impression. The magician, it was said, caused a boy to see certain persons called for, in a little ink, placed in his hand, in the centre of a double magic square, somewhat like the figure. One of the most profound writers of the age even wrote: “There will be no lack of confidence to pronounce; and the authority so pronouncing will assume the name and tone of philosophy, that there was nothing more in the whole matter than artful contrivance; that there was no intervention of an intelligent agency extraneous to that of the immediate ostensible agent. But can this assumption be made on any other ground than a prior general assumption that there is no such preternatural intervention in the system of the world? But how to know that there is not? The negative decision pronounced in confident ignorance, is a conceited impertinence, which ought to be rebuked by that philosophy whose oracles it is affecting to utter. For what any man knows, or can know, there may be such intervention. That it is not incompatible with the constitution of the world, is an unquestionable fact with the unsophisticated believers in the sacred records. And not a few occurrences in later history have totally defied every attempt at explanation in any other way.”A

And yet sir Gardiner Wilkinson, who subsequently travelled in Egypt, and visited the magician, says:—

“On going to see him, I was determined to examine the matter with minute attention, at the same time that I divested myself of every previous bias, either for or against his pretended powers. A party having been made up to witness the exhibition, we met, according to previous agreement, at Mr. Lewis’s house on Wednesday evening, the 8th of December. The magician was ushered in, and having taken his place, we all sat down, some before him, others by his side. The party consisted of colonel Barnet, our consul-general, Mr. Lewis, Dr. Abbott, Mr. Samuel, Mr. Christian, M. Prisse, with another French gentleman, and myself, four of whom understood Arabic very well; so that we had no need of any interpreter. The magician, after entering into conversation with many of us on different subjects, and discussing two or three pipes, prepared for the performance. He first of all requested that a brazier of live charcoal should be brought him, and, in the mean while, occupied himself in writing upon a long slip of paper five sentences of two lines each, then two others, one of a single line, and the other of two, as an invocation to the spirits. Every sentence began with ‘Tuyurshoon.’ Each was separated from the one above and below it by a line, to direct him in tearing them apart. A boy was then called, who was ordered to sit down before the magician. He did so, and the magician having asked for some ink from Mr. Lewis, traced with a pen on the palm of his right hand a double square, containing the nine numbers in this order, or in English—making fifteen each way; the centre one being five—the evil number. This I remarked to the magician, but he made no reply. A brazier was brought and placed between the magician and the boy, who was ordered to look stedfastly into the ink, and report what he should see. I begged the magician to speak slowly enough to give me time to write down every word, which he promised to do, without being displeased at the request; nor had he objected, during the preliminary part of the performance, to my attempt to sketch him as he sat. He now began an incantation, calling on the spirits by the power of ‘our lord Soolayman,’ with the words ‘tuyurshoon’ and ‘haderoo’ (be present) frequently repeated.

“He then muttered words to himself, and tearing apart the different sentences he had written, he put them, one after another, into the fire, together with some frankincense. This done, he asked the boy if any one had come. Boy. ‘Yes, many.’—Magician. ‘Tell them to sweep.’—B. ‘Sweep.’—M. ‘Tell them to bring the flags.’—B. ‘Bring the flags.’—M. ‘Have they brought any?’—B. ‘Yes.’—M. ‘O, what colour?’—B. ‘Green.’—M. ‘Say, Bring another.’—B. ‘Bring another.’—M. ‘Has it come?’—B. ‘Yes, a green one.’—M. ‘Another.’—B. ‘Another.’—M. ‘Is it brought?’—B. ‘Yes, another green one—they are all green.’ This boy was then sent away, and another was brought, who had never before seen the magician, having been chosen with another, by Mr. Lewis, on purpose; but after many incantations, incense, and long delay, he could see nothing, and fell asleep over the ink. The other boy was then called in, but he, like the other, could not be made to see anything; and a fourth was brought in, who had evidently acted his part before. He first saw a shadow, and was ordered to ‘tell him to sleep;’ and, after the flags and the sultan as usual, some one suggested that lord Fitzroy Somerset should be called for. He was described in a white Frank dress, a long, high, white hat, black stockings, and white gloves, tall, and standing before him with black boots. I asked how he could see his stockings with boots? The boy answered, ‘Under his trowsers.’ He continued, ‘His eyes are white, moustaches, no beard, but little whiskers, and yellow or light hair; he is thin, thin legs, thin arms; in his left hand he holds a stick, and in the other a pipe; he has a black handkerchief round his neck, his throat buttoned up, his trowsers are long, he wears green spectacles.’ The magician, seeing some of the party smiling at the description and its inaccuracies, said to the boy, ‘Don’t tell lies, boy.’ To which he answered, ‘I do not; why should I?’—M. ‘Tell him to go.’—B. ‘Go.’ Queen Victoria was next called for, who was described as short, dressed in black trowsers, a white hat, black shoes, white gloves, red coat, with lining, and black waistcoat, with whiskers, but no beard nor moustaches, and holding in his hand a glass tumbler. He was asked if the person were a man or a woman? He answered, ‘A man.’ We told the magician that it was our queen! He said, ‘I do not know why they should say what is false; I knew she was a woman, but the boys describe as they see.’

“From the manner in which the questions were put, it is very evident that, when a boy is persuaded to see anything, the appearances of the sweeper, the flags, and the sultan, are the result of leading questions. The boy pretends or imagines he sees a man or a shadow, and he is told to order some one to sweep: he is therefore prepared with his answer; and the same continues to the end, the magician always telling him what he is to call for, and consequently what he is to see. The descriptions of persons asked for are almost universally complete failures.”

After these and other details, sir Gardiner says, “I am decidedly of opinion that the whole of the first part is done solely by leading questions, and that whenever the descriptions succeed in any point, the success is owing to accident, or to unintentional prompting in the mode of questioning the boys.”B

A subsequent traveller, lord Nugent, places the state of the case in a new light:—

“It is enough to say, that not one person whom Abd-el-Kader described bore the smallest resemblance to the one named by us; and all those called for were of remarkable appearance. All the preparations, all the ceremony, and all the attempts at description, bore evidences of such a coarse and stupid fraud, as would render any detail of the proceeding, or any argument tending to connect it with any marvellous power, ingenious art, or interesting inquiry, a mere childish waste of time. How, then, does it happen, that respectable and sensitive minds have been staggered by the exhibitions of this impostor? I think that the solution which Mr. Lane himself suggested as probable is quite complete. When the exhibition was over, Mr. Lane had some conversation with the magician, which he afterwards repeated to us. In reply to an observation of Mr. Lane’s to him upon his entire failure, the magician admitted that ‘he had often failed since the death of Osman Effendi;’—the same Osman Effendi that Mr. Lane mentions in his book as having been of the party on every occasion on which he had been witness of the magician’s art, and whose testimony the Quarterly Review cites in support of the marvel, which (searching much too deep for what lies very near, indeed, to the surface,) it endeavours to solve by suggesting the probability of diverse complicated optical combinations.

“And, be it again observed, optical combinations cannot throw one ray of light upon the main difficulty, the means of procuring the resemblance required of the absent person. I now give Mr. Lane’s solution of the whole mystery, in his own words, my note of which I submitted to him, and obtained his ready permission to make public in any way I might see fit. This Osman Effendi, Mr. Lane told me, was a Scotchman, formerly serving in a British regiment, who was taken prisoner by the Egyptian army during our unfortunate expedition to Alexandria, in 1807; that he was sold as a slave, and persuaded to abjure Christianity, and profess the Mussulman faith; that, applying his talents to his necessities, he made himself useful by dint of some little medical knowledge he had picked up on duty in the regimental hospital; that he obtained his liberty at the instance of the Sheik Ibraim, (M. Burckhardt,) through the means of Mr. Salt; that, in process of time, he became second interpreter of the British consulate; that Osman was, very probably, acquainted, by portraits or otherwise, with the general appearance of most Englishmen of celebrity, and certainly could describe the peculiar dresses of English professions, such as army, navy, church, and the ordinary habits of persons of different professions in England; that, on all occasions when Mr. Lane was witness of the magician’s success, Osman had been present at the previous occasions, had heard who should be called to appear, and so had, probably, obtained a description of the figure, when it was to be the apparition of some private friend of persons present; that, on these occasions, he very probably had some pre-arranged code of words, by which he could communicate secretly with the magician. To this it must be added, that his avowed theory of morals was, on all occasions, that ‘we did our whole duty if we did what we thought best for our fellow-creatures and most agreeable to them.’ Osman was present when Mr. Lane was so astonished at hearing the boy describe very accurately, the person of M. Burckhardt, with whom the magician was unacquainted, but who had been Osman’s patron, and who, also, knew well the other gentleman whom Mr. Lane states in his book that the boy described as appearing ill and lying on a sofa, and Mr. Lane added that he had, probably, been asked by Osman about that gentleman’s health, whom Mr. Lane then knew to be suffering under an attack of rheumatism. He concluded, therefore, by avowing that there was no doubt in his mind, connecting all these circumstances with the declaration the magician had just made, that Osman had been the confederate. Thus I have given in Mr. Lane’s words, not only with his consent, but at his ready offer, what he has no doubt is the explanation of the whole of the subject which he now feels to require no deeper inquiry; and which has been adopted by many as a marvel upon an exaggerated view of the testimony that he offered in his book before he had been convinced, as he now is, of the imposture. I gladly state this, on the authority of an enlightened and honourable man, to disabuse minds that have wandered into serious speculation on a matter which I cannot but feel to be quite undeserving of it.”C—So true is it, that, while many effects, which appear mysterious to the multitude, may be explained by those of greater knowledge, others, which, for a time, defy penetration, are, at length, clearly exhibited in their true light. It becomes us, therefore, carefully to examine testimony, to receive that only which will bear scrutiny, and to suspend our judgment whenever we are unacquainted with the whole case. The best of men are prone to err; and well is it, if, ceasing from them, we have been led by Divine grace to trust implicitly in the God of truth.