pages: unmaskingrobert00houdgoog.pdf, 320
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unmaskingrobert00houdgoog.pdf | 320 | ROBERT-HOUDIN'S IGNORANCE OF MAGIC retired from public life, purchased a farm, and rested on their laurels and a corpulent bank account. One of them is said to have admitted that all their work was skilful manipulation and not spiritualistic manifestations. Nevertheless, their names will live so long as spiritualism is talked of or cabinet effects tolerated by the public. The trick as offered by the Davenport Brothers con- sisted of their being tied hand and foot at opposite ends of the cabinet, which was hung with musical instruments, bells, etc. The two men slipped in and out of the ropes without delay or apparent damage to the ropes, and musi- cal instruments were played with arms presumably in bondage. Robert-Houdin, in attempting to expose the trick, makes two flagrant errors. First he claims that "by dint of special practice on the part of our mediums, the thumb is made to lie flat in the hand, when the whole assumes a cylindrical form of scarcely greater diameter than the wrist"; and second that the Davenport Brothers had trained themselves to see in the dark. As releasing myself from fastenings of all sorts, from ropes to strait-jackets, has been my profession for twenty years, I am in a position to contradict Robert-Houdin's first claim positively. I have met thousands of persons who claimed that the rope, as well as the handcuff trick, was accomplished by folding the hand together or making the wrist larger than the hand, but never have I met men or women who could make their hands smaller than their wrists. I have even gone so far as to have iron bands made and press my hands together, hoping eventually to make my hands smaller than my wrists, but this has [ 29I ] |