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POLAND WATER
1 SECRETS OF THE MYSTIC ART
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151
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INTERIOR VIEW OE NEW SPRING HOUSE.
The famous Poland Spring is located under the glass case,
which may be seen in the picture above, behind the bronze
framed glass partition.
Interior finish of Spring House is Italian Marble.
Hiram Rickcr &Sons, South Poland, Maine
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Christian fScienc Mervlce.
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PEAKING of sleight of
hand, said a guest at
The Inn the other even
ing, there is a little shop
in New York, the head
quarters of magic in
America that's well worth a visit, for
about everything imaginable con
nected with the mystic art is to be found
here, and even India itself, famous the
world over, frequently calls upon the
proprietor for apparatus.
Most interesting of all are the relics of
famous magicians. There is, for in
stance, the vanishing cage of Buatier de
Kolta, which Mrs. de Kolta presented
to the proprietor after the death of the
conjurer. Sleight of hand men declare
that de Kolta was the greatest prestidigi
tator that ever lived. He never used a
trick invented by any other person, and
he is said to have invented more tricks
which have been copied by other per
formers than any other man. This van
ishing cage was a favorite. It was sim
ply a bird cage, containing a live canary,
which he held out in plain view of the
audience. Then the whole thing disap
peared. That was all there was to it,
but it was most mysterious. The cage
was collapsible and disappeared up De
Kolta's sleeve. The art consisted in
making it disappear invisibly and with
out hurting the canary.
De Kolta made this cage with his own
hands. Most prestidigitators have been
expert mechanicians. Many of them
have originally been watchmakers or
optical instrument manufacturers. The
next most prolific sources of supply
have been the professions of chemistry
and medicine.
A souvenir of u Alexander the Great "
Hermann shows the pleasure which that
prince of the art took in his own hocus
pocus. This was too small a trick to use
on the stage, and he invented it merely
to amuse his friends in his own home.
It is a little cabinet of ebony, inlaid with
mother of pearl, containing thirty-two
small drawers, just the size of a playing
card, all numbered. The observer was
asked to choose one of the thirty-two
cards and to name the drawer in which
he would have it appear. The card al
ways appeared in the right drawer. The
conjurers art Jay in compelling the
selection of the right card. The draw
ers had false bottoms and springs, and a
card like that selected had been pre
viously concealed in all of them, waiting
for a deft pressure to bring it to light in
the drawer selected.
Visitors to the proprietor of this little
shop of magic sometimes sit down un
awares upon a plain, old fashioned sofa
which they are surprised to learn was
once the throne of a high priestess of
the occult, Miss Haidie Heller, in her
famous second sight ace with Robert
Heller. This trick awakened wide in
terest thirty years ago. It was most
mysterious and inexplicable and puzzled
even those who knew that it was a
trick. Miss Heller sat upon the sofa
blindfolded and with her back to the
audience. Heller, in the audience, bor
rowed objects from spectators, and Miss
Heller described them sometimes. Not.
a word was spoken by Heller, nor could
she see him to get her cue by his ges
tures. The apparatus did it all. The
sofa was wired for an electric battery.
A confederate sat in the audience, his
chair connected with the battery, the
electric push button under the seat. A
code was arranged by which Miss Heller
knew exactly what to say. The per
formance was rendered more mysterious
by Heller talking to her in part of the
tests. Some people supposed, of course,
that he was giving her the cue with his
questions. But when the same results
were obtained in silence the suspicious
were also mystified.
Apparatus is an elastic term when,
used in connection with legerdermain.
Some pieces of apparatus can be con
cealed between two fingers. Others fill
boxes ten feet long. The earlier ma
gicians used cumbersome apparatus -Frikell,
a Finn, born in 1818, who was
knighted by the King of Denmark and.
received diamond rings and the like from
most of the sovereigns of Europe, revo
lutionized the art. He used no appara
tus at all. This tendency prevailed for
many years, but at the present time the
tendency toward big, showy effects and
gorgeous stage settings is bringing in the
use of more complicated apparatus than
ever. A first class magician now trav
els with a railroad car full of apparatus
Fifteen thousand dollars is not an un
usual sum to pay for staging a first class
magician's show nowadays. It is a
mechanical age. Present day prestidigi
tators in no way excel the old fellows in
pure legerdemain, but a flood of mechan
ical inventions have come to help them,
and all the conjurers have to do is to
manipulate these skillfully and grace
fully. Their task is no easier, however,,
for. it is a sharper and more skeptical age-"
than the earlier men played to, and one
used to mechanism of all kinds.
The little shop carries a thousand dif
ferent kinds of apparatus in stock.
Then there are thousands of other
which it is called upon to make, some of
them very old. Every day some book or
leaf out of a book will arrive from Kala
mazoo or Calcutta, with a letter stating
that the writer wants to do the trick
described, and wants the apparatus for
it constructed. Some of these tricks
were invented centuries ago. The great
present day inventions in the art are
illusions and levitation, both of which
require elaborate devices. Harry Kel
lar's levitation act, in which the body of
a man rose slowly into midair and re
mained suspended there while the hyp
notizer fanned him, required a compli
cated machine behind the scenes to work
it.
De Kolta's illusion, in which every ob
ject on the stage appeared and disap
peared in a seemingly unaccountable
manner, ending with the decapitation of
a woman whose head thereupon danced
uncannily through the air without any