Modern Magic: A Practical Treatise on the Art of Conjuring

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.