pages: practicalmagicia00harr.pdf, 79
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practicalmagicia00harr.pdf | 79 | THE PRACTICAL MAGICIAN. 69 depend on the impulse in the ear, but on other facts, will be per- ceived when the original communication is interrupted, provided there be a sensible ccho. This circumstance will be acknowl- edged by any person who has had occasion to walk along a valley, intercepted with buildings, at the time that a peal of bells is ring- ing in it. The sound of the bells, instead of arriving constantly at the cars of the person so situated, is frequently reflected in a short time fron two or three difierent places. These deceptions are, in many cases, so much diversified by the successive interpositions of fresh objects, that the steeple appears, in the hearer's judgment, to perform the part of an expert ventriloquist on a theatre-the extent of which is adapted to its own powers, and not to those of the human voice. The similarity of effect which connects this phenomenon with ventriloquism, convinced the author, whenever he heard it, that what we know to be the cause in one instance, is also the cause in the other, viz., that the echo reaches the ear, while the original sound is intercepted by accident in the case of the bells but by art, in the case of the ventriloquist. It is the business of the ventriloquist to amuse his admirers with tricks resembling the foregoing delusion; and it will be read- ily granted that he has a subtle sense, highly corrected by exper- ience to manage, on which account the judgment must be cheated as well as the car. This can only be accomplished by making the pulses, constitu- ting his words striike the heads of his hearers, not in the right lines that join their persons and his. He must therefore, know how to disguise the true direction of his voice; because the arti- fice will give him an opportunity to substitute almost any ccho he choses in the place of it. But the superior part of the human body has been already proved to form an extensive seat of sound, from every point of which the pulses are repelled as if they diverge from a common centre. This is the reason why people, who speak in the usual way, cannot conceal the direction of their voices, which in reality fly off towards all points at the same insiant. The ventriloquist, therefore, by some means or other, accquires the difficult habit of contructing the field of sound within the compass cf his lips, which enables him to confine the real path of his voice to narrow limits. For he who is master of his art has nothing to do but to place his mouth obliquely to the company, and to dart his words out of his mouth-if the expression may be used -whence they will then strike the cars of the audience as that from an unexpected quarter. Nature seems to fix no bounds to this kind of deception, only care must be taken not to let the path of the direct pulses pass too near the head of the person who is played upon, but the divergency of the pulses make him per- ceive the voice itself. Our readers will, therefore, not be sur- |