MagicGizmo

The oldest trick in the world is known to conjurers as the "Cups and Balls." The conjurer has three small cups, usually made of brass, and three small cork balls, about the size of a filbert. All sorts of things happen with these simple articles. The conjurer can make a ball pass invisibly through the top of each cup, or he can make all three balls go invisibly from one cup to another, and so on.

There is practically no limit to the effects which the conjurer can produce with three cups and three balls, and as the trick is one of pure sleight of hand it has always been admired alike by magicians and the public. Who are the famous magicians who have done this trick? Well, they are mostly anonymous, for they have performed on race courses. The trick is peculiarly suited to the racecourse conjurer, for it can be done in the center of the audience and no preparation is needed. The foundations of magic are laid in this one little trick, and if I were writing for magicians I could prove the truth of that statement. For many years dishonest men have made a precarious living by this one trick alone, for the "cups and balls" was the ancestor of the more familiar "three thimbles and a pea" swindle.

There is but one drawback to the fine old trick: Its effect is lost in a large room; the audience must be close to the conjurer's table. The racecourse conjurer has his audience standing up near him--the right position for a spectator who would appreciate the trick properly.

One of the most popular tricks of modern times has been "The Magic Kettle." It created quite a sensation a few years ago, but I fancy that most magicians were rather displeased with it, for it was more of a scientific toy than a trick. The chief effect consisted in making the kettle boil water when it was standing on a block of ice.

Magic kettles being all the rage, I, naturally, had to have one; but I was determined that my magic kettle should be a little different from anybody else's. Therefore I borrowed an idea from a very old trick--the inexhaustible bottle: a bottle from which the conjurer can pour any drink asked for by the audience. In place of the bottle I used a kettle, and from it I poured spirits, wines, liqueurs, and milk and water (in separate glasses; my milk was the real thing).

I nearly had a terrific failure with the magic kettle. The trick itself never failed me, it was just a little too good for the audience. The trouble occurred at Leicester. The trick had been well advertised all over the town, and a large balloon, in the form of an elephant, floated over the Temperance Hall, in which I was to perform. The name of the hall ought to have been a warning to me, but it was not. At the last moment I was prohibited by the proprietors from doing the magic kettle because of the intoxicating drinks it produced. It appeared that the man who built the hall had given it on the condition that no intoxicating drinks were consumed on the premises, and there was a clause in my agreement telling me of this condition, but I had overlooked it.

What was to be done? I could not possibly break faith with the public, for the kettle was the leading item in my programme. I hurriedly decided to make the kettle a total abstainer for the time being and to cause it to produce only temperance drinks: tea, coffee, cocoa, milk, lemonade. Some people marvelled at the idea of having hot lemonade served to them; but I did not, for I knew that it was beyond the powers of my trusty kettle to serve a hot drink one moment and an iced drink the next, and so on.

Now for the sequel to that story. I have performed only twice out of England, and on both occasions in Vienna. During my second visit to Vienna--twenty-five years after the first--I wanted to do the kettle trick, but I found that there was such a very large variety of non-temperance drinks in Vienna that I could not possibly remember them all. To offer to produce any drink named by the audience was out of the question altogether. So I fell back on the old idea of making the kettle a total abstainer, and found to my joy that hot lemonade was a regular drink in Vienna. The audiences thought that I had paid them a compliment by remembering that they liked their lemonade hot, and it was with great difficulty that the audiences were prevented from mobbing me and the kettle as I rushed about the hall pouring out any drink I was asked for. Never has the kettle made a bigger success than it made in Vienna, and I take this opportunity of thanking the proprietors of Temperance Hall, Leicester.

"The Vanishing Lady" was at one time a very popular illusion. It was invented by a brilliant magician, Buatier de Kolta, and was shown by him for the first time in Paris. The performer came forward with a newspaper, which he spread out on the stage. On the paper he placed a chair. A lady sat on the chair. The performer covered her with a silk shawl. Go! She disappeared.

The trick was a great improvement on anything that had been done before de Kolta's time. He had a wholesome scorn of cabinets and other cumbersome pieces of apparatus. "I can do anything," he once said to me, "if I am allowed to put up a bedstead on the stage," and I agreed with him that the day of cabinets and other things which were so obviously tricks, was over.

Some time after de Kolta's death I tried to go one better than "The Vanishing Lady." I wanted to make the lady vanish without covering her up, and after many experiments I produced "The Mascot Moth." A lady took the part of the moth. On a fully lighted stage, without covering the lady, I just picked her up in my arms and she disappeared.

Buatier de Kolta invented several tricks which have made the name of more than one magician. One of the tricks was "The Disappearing Birdcage." The cage, with a bird inside it, disappeared from the inventor's hands. Another of his famous tricks was the production of vast quantities of paper flowers from a sheet of paper which he twisted up into a cone-shaped bag. This trick baffled conjurers for a long time, but one evening a draught on the stage caught one of the flowers and blew it into the orchestra. The secret of the trick was given away, and it is now known to every conjurer.

The "Bullet-catching Trick" will be fresh in the minds of my readers, for it was by performing that trick that Chung Ling Soo, the famous Chinese magician--(an Englishman off the stage, actually born in New York City; his father was a Scot, his mother a Briton)--recently met his death. He was warned over and over again by his friends against doing that trick, and he must have known that at least half-a-dozen conjurers have been killed by doing the same trick. A bullet, marked by the audience, is fired at the magician, who catches it between his teeth. Soo used a plate for the purpose. The trick is always sensational and effective.

Curiously enough, Soo made his name in this country with a trick of a totally different kind--the "Aerial Fishing Rod." He would stand in the center of the stage with a rod and line in his hand and make a cast into the auditorium. Suddenly the audience would be startled to see a fish caught on the end of the line over their heads. Soo would then take in the line, remove the fish, drop it into a glass bowl of water, and everybody could see it swimming about--quite happy and comfortable. The trick was invented by an amateur conjurer. Professional magicians are indebted to amateurs for several good tricks. Amateurs seldom realize the effectiveness of a trick until they see it performed by a professional, who, of course, makes every point tell.

Conjurers are also indebted for some of their tricks to the bogus spiritualists. Dr. Slade, the famous medium, provided conjurers with an excellent slate trick, but the conjurers simplified his method. The conjurer shows a clean slate and produces on it any writing--figures or words--which he requires.

The "spiritualists" have one very effective trick which they use to prove the presence of spirits. The medium allows someone to tie one end of a cord round his wrist in any way he pleases and to seal the knots. Having done this, the assistant holds the other end of the cord in his hand. The lights are lowered for a few moments; when they are turned up the assistant sees a knot in the middle of the cord. How does the knot get there? One end is tied tightly round the medium's wrist, the assistant holds the other end. The knot must be spirit-tied. But it never is.

The drawing-room performer of today has improved on that trick. He will have a piece of string tied tightly round both his wrists with about a yard of string between them. The knots may be sealed. The conjurer borrows a ring and retires behind a screen for a moment. When he emerges the audience sees that the ring is not only on the string but tied on it, and the knots on the wrists have not been tampered with. No, it is not done by spiritualism! And the knots are perfectly fair, including the knot that ties the ring in its place.

The Davenport Brothers, the famous mediums, made the name of more than one conjurer, for they originated some excellent rope-tying tricks. I rather fancy that my friend, Mr. Harry Kellar, America's most famous magician, owes his celebrated "Kellar-tie" to an idea of the Davenport Brothers. In Mr. Kellar's expert hands it is a most mystifying trick. He has his hands tied together behind his back by a member of the audience. In a second he is ready to shake hands with his volunteer assistant, for his hand is free. Is it? Mr. Kellar turns round instantly, and shows his hands still tied tightly together in their original position. Then just as the assistant is wondering if "seeing is believing" he is startled by being patted on the back by Mr. Kellar. He looks round. Mr. Kellar's hands are still tied behind his back. Let me add that this bald description does not do justice to the splendid effect Mr. Kellar produces with his "tie," for which every magician has a profound admiration.

A few good tricks have come to us from India. The Indian conjurers content themselves with doing a few good tricks and doing them very well, a fact which amateur conjurers should remember, but never will!

I regard the famous Indian rope trick as a myth. I do not believe that any conjurer ever stood in the open air, threw up a rope, made it rigid in that position, and then caused a boy to climb up the rope and disappear at the top of it. It is said that the Indian performer of this trick hypnotizes his audience, but I am not a believer in that explanation.

The best of all Indian tricks, to my mind, is the mango-tree trick. The tree is made to grow from a seed planted in the ground, and eventually the first shoot grows into a large tree--by means of a series of very clever substitutions. This trick is the forerunner of the orange-tree performed by many European conjurers. The tree puts forth blossoms, which develop into fruit in front of the audience. Robert-Houdin, the famous French conjurer, claimed this trick as his invention, but my friend, Mr. Harry Houdini, the famous "handcuff king," shows clearly enough in his book, The Unmasking of Robert-Houdin, that the trick was invented in the eighteenth century by Christopher Pinchbeck, an Englishman.

The conjurer who sits down to invent a new trick is seldom successful in thinking of an entirely new effect. The most he can hope to do, in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand, is to eliminate some of the crudities of an old trick and bring it up to modern requirements.

For example, many years ago there was a little trick, obviously very mechanical, in which differently coloured liquids, mixed together, were made to magically separate themselves and reappear in their original places. My version of the trick is as follows:

I have three assistants on the stage. Each holds a large glass goblet. Into one goblet I pour some milk; into another some wine. The two liquids are then poured from the goblets into a third goblet. I hold a flag, on a stick, in front of this goblet for half a second. Then the flag disappears from the stick and is taken at once from the goblet in which wine and milk were mixed, and the wine and milk separate and return to their two goblets, which are not covered at any time in the trick. In one sense I was the inventor, for the trick had never been before done in that form; in another sense I was not the inventor, for the idea of magically separating two liquids was not mine.

One little trick has been doubly famous. The inventor of it was Verbeck, a very clever conjurer who performed in London in the 'eighties. He used a wedding-ring, borrowed from the audience, and one of his own programmes for the trick. This is one of the tricks by which my friend, the late Charles Bertram, will always be remembered. In place of the ring Bertram used a shilling, borrowed from the audience, and in place of a programme the cover of a copy of Tit.Bits. Having persuaded someone from the audience to help him in the trick, Bertram would tear the cover of Tit-Bits in halves, hold one in his hand, and ask his volunteer assistant to put the shilling on the paper.

Bertram then rolled the shilling in the paper and gave the parcel to his assistant, together with a piece of sealing-wax. The assistant was asked to touch the back of his hand with the sealing-wax and open the parcel. The paper had been converted into a large envelope, closely sealed. From this two more sealed envelopes were taken. The innermost one contained the shilling.

Suggesting that if he did the trick again his assistant would see how it was done, Bertram repeated the performance with the remaining half of the cover of Tit-Bits. Finally he would take all six envelopes and hand them to his assistant with the assurance that if he looked at them closely he would see how the trick was done. The assistant would take the parcel and open it. The six envelopes had been restored to their original state--the cover of Tit-Bits. This was one of Bertram's best tricks and he certainly improved upon the trick as it was originally invented.

Some excellent tricks have come to us from the Chinese. The trick known as "The Chinese Rings"--in which a number of solid metal rings, examined by the audience, become linked and unlinked when the conjurer handles them--is still one of the best tricks we have. Another old Chinese trick is the magical production of a number of glass bowls full of water, with fish swimming in them. The suspension of a person in midair is a very old Eastern trick. These three tricks, and several others from the East, have been performed by generations of conjurers all over the world, and audiences are still interested in them.

"Second sight" is a more modern trick. It really consists in the performer secretly transmitting a message to his assistant. Some of the early methods of bringing about this mystery would hardly pass muster today, but in the latter part of the eighteenth century, when Pinetti performed the trick in London, a magician's labors were a little less arduous than they are now. Robert Heller, an Englishman who performed in the middle of the nineteenth century, achieved much fame with this trick, and yet the Zancigs made a new trick of it when they performed a few years ago at the Alhambra.

A very famous automaton was known as "The Pastry-Cook of the Palais Royal." A figure of the pastry-cook would emerge from the model of a confectioner's shop, receive the orders of the audience for any kind of sweetmeat or pastry, and then go inside and execute them. Houdini, in the book ! have already mentioned, traces this trick back to 1796, in which year it was presented by Haddock, an English performer, who used a model of a fruiterer's shop for the trick. The audience could ask for any fruit they liked.

There are countless other tricks which have been famous in their day and have helped to make conjurers famous. And when all is said and done some of the oldest tricks, performed by modern methods, remain the most popular alike with magicians and the public. I have not space even for their names!