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Modern Magic: A Practical Treatise on the Art of Conjuring
·
Professor Hoffmann
721
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;
but,
as
my
readers
will
have
already
seen,
as
soon
as
second
sight
is
explained,
it
will
cause
wonder
no
more.
There
are
always
two
persons
engaged
in
an
exhibition
of
clairvoyance--the
person
who
asks
what
the
article
is
and
the
person
who
answers.
The
whole
secret
of
second
sight
lies
in
the
method
of
asking
what
the
article
is.
A
sort
of
dictionary
has
to
be
learned
by
both,
and
this
lesson
is
certainly
not
more
difficult
than
that
of
the
tragedian
in
learning
his
part;
but
the
audience
are
deceived
by
the
simplicity
of
the
questions
asked.
Although
the
words
used
by
the
questioner
are
nearly
always
the
same,
the
position
of
the
words
is
different.
Hence,
a
different
answer
can
be
applied
for
every
varying
construction
of
the
sentence.
When
these
different
questions
and
their
answers
are
thoroughly
understood
by
the
two
accomplices,
they
can
give
an
exhibition
which
to
the
uninitiated
will
appear
marvellous
and
unaccountable.
When
the
interrogator
asks
the
question,
“Is
this
picture
colored
or
plain?”
the
answer
is
“Plain;”
or
if
the
question
is,
“Is
this
picture
plain
or
colored?”
the
answer
is
“Colored.”
This
is
the
whole
groundwork
of
second
sight,
and
in
order
more
fully
to
illustrate
this
matter
I
will
give
a
series
of
answers
and
questions
which
have
been
adopted
by
a
number
of
English
and
American
professors.
In
asking
the
color
of
an
article,
the
question
can
be
so
differently
constructed
that
each
construction
can
bear
the
answer
for
every
ordinary
color.
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