Modern Magic: A Practical Treatise on the Art of Conjuring

We should mention, before quitting the subject of these tricks, that in order to avoid the trouble and expense of fixing the necessary conducting wires in a building not specially appropriated to magical performances, an upright brass rod (which may be detached at pleasure) is sometimes fitted on each side of the performer’s table (see Fig. 311), and the apparatus in use (drum, bell, cash-box, etc.) is suspended by appropriate cords between these rods. The conducting wires are connected within the table with the lower ends of the brass uprights, and thence pass down its hinder legs to the battery behind the scenes. There are many considerations of convenience in favour of this arrangement, but the tricks performed are less effective than where the apparatus is hung fairly from the ceiling, and apparently out of all possible reach of mechanical influence. THE AËRIAL SUSPENSION.--This is a very old trick, performed originally by the Indian jugglers, who kept the modus operandi a profound secret. The ingenuity, however, of Robert-Houdin penetrated the mystery, and in 1849 made it a special feature of his séances fantastiques. At that time the public mind was much interested in the anæsthetic qualities of ether, which had then recently been discovered. Robert-Houdin manipulated this fact into a valuable advertisement. He gave out that he had discovered in the popular anæsthetic a still more marvellous property, viz., that when inhaled under certain conditions, it neutralized the attraction of gravitation in the person inhaling it, who became, for the time being, light as air. In proof of this, he brought forward his youngest son, then a child of ten or thereabouts, and after having made him smell at a small phial, really empty, but supposed to contain ether, caused him to recline in mid-air, with no other support than that afforded by, to all appearance, an ordinary walking-stick, placed in a vertical position under his right elbow. It is characteristic of Robert-Houdin’s minute attention to the mise en scène of a trick, that while his son sniffed at the empty bottle, his assistant, behind the scenes, poured genuine ether upon a hot shovel, so that the fumes, reaching the nostrils of the audience, might prove, indirectly but convincingly, that ether was really employed.