Modern Magic: A Practical Treatise on the Art of Conjuring

CHAPTER V. MARIONETTES. In perusing these articles the reader must have observed, ere this, that a great deal of the success of mechanical, and, in fact, all kinds of conjuring, consists as much in the credulity and ignorance of the audience as in the perfection of the trick itself. It is not at all surprising that, centuries ago, the performer of a few juggling tricks, or the man slightly in advance of his age in science, should have been looked upon by the vulgar crowd as a person having dealings with another world, and that his Infernal Majesty himself should have been called in to father all his supernatural tricks and wonders. Happily, we have reached an age when enlightenment has driven superstition almost entirely away; and while we marvel and wonder at the cleverness of such men as Maskelyne and Cooke, Dr. Lynn, and many others, even the most ignorant of persons would never think that these gentlemen had any diabolical contract with such an uncanny gentleman as Mephistopheles. I make these remarks because the tricks I shall shortly describe have been performed, perhaps in a slightly different manner to what they are now, centuries ago, in the distant ages of Egyptian might, the earlier days of the Hindoos, and long before civilization had reached the west of Europe. A venerable and oft-repeated magical delusion is that of dismembering a living person. Dr. Lynn relies upon this worn-out pantomime trick for the staple of his performance; but it must be confessed that his method of manipulation and neatness of execution saves, what would be in a clumsy person’s hand, a very sorry exhibition.