Mirth, Magic and Mystery

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 72, 18 December 1928, Page 43 (Supplement)

Mirth, Magic and Mystery

An Interview With PROFESSOR NIKALDI

Exclusive to The Dominion

When we heard that the worldfamous Professor Nikaldi was in London, we lost no time in despatching our special representative to interview the great magician in his hotel. Our representative was fortunate .enough to catch the great man in a gracious mood and to prevail upon him to divulge for the benefit of our readers a few of his professional secrets. After producing three billiard balls and a packet of cigarettes from behind his visitor’s right ear, and shaken a nest of white mice from his hat, he apologised for these preliminaries, which he excused on the grounds of habit, and said, “Before I graduated in the Royal College of Magic, and became a Professor in the Art, I always believed that the quickness of the hand deceived the eye. Quite a mistake, I assure you!—Excuse me.” He paused to detach.a large celluloid spider from the front of our representative’s coat, and tossing it out of the window, continued, “Many of my most effective tricks are really so simple that any of your readers would be able to do them with very little practice. All they require is a sufficient flow of patter, which may be quite irrelevant, and which need only be pure foolishness, provided it appears fairly plausible. “For example, I have mystified thousands of people with no more apparatus than a piece of string. Have you ever seen this one?” Professor Nikaldi then produced two pieces of string from his pocket, and held them in the centre, as you will see from the accompanying illustration (1).

“Now tie one of the ends on the left of my hand to one of the ends on the opposite side. That’s it, and now the game thing with the other two ends. So.” The Professor kept his hand in the same position. "Now you think that you have merely made two loops of string (2). Look.” He took away his hand and his visitor saw that there was only one large loop (3). “To get that effect,” said the magician, "I take two pieces of string, fold them in half and tie them together at the centre with a piece of hair or cotton (4). I then place my hand over the point at which the two pieces are joined, so that the strings appear to be merely passed through the hand. You see that if the top string on one side of the hand is tied to the top string on the other side, and then the other two ends are tied in the same way, the result will be one large loop, but, of course, I always impress on my audience that I have merely had two loops of string made, and am holding them together in my hand 1 “Another of my more effective tricks which is also very simple, is done with the aid of a and a small sheet of plain paper. Thank you, sir.” He borrowed a penny, and then continued,

“The object of this trick is to make the penny disappear.” He placed the penny on the piece of paper (5). “Now watch.” Folding over one side of the paper, he explained that the penny was securely held there. He then folded over the other side, and said, “Of course, if this side overlaps the other side, the edge must be turned down.” You can see how he did this from the illustration (G). It was quite evident that the penny could not get

out at the sides of the packet. He then folded over one end and asked the other if the penny was still there. It was, and he folded over the other to make sure, as he said, that the penny could not possibly escape. He then tore the paper in half and showed that the penny had disappeared ! “I’ll tell you how that’s done. It’s all perfectly fair until the audience has felt the penny in the paper. The moment this is done, I tilt my hand slightly (7) so that the penny slips into it.

“Thus when the other end of the paper is folded over it does not imprison the penny which is in my hand (8). I then produce it from some unlikely place, for example, underneath a lady’s handkerchief if she has it lying on her lap. It is easy to ‘discover’ the penny when picking up the handkerchief. “Now, here’s a good one that requires only the slighest preparation. Will you pass me that plate of fruit from the sideboard? Thank you.” The Profes-

sor picked up an apple and an orange. He then cut the apple into eight pieces. “Now,” he said, “imagine that you are eight people and give one of those sections to each of yourselves to'eat.” Our representative did so. Dr. Nikaldi then took the orange. Picking up his visitor’s bowler hat he hid the orange in it for a moment or two. “Now, speaking collectively to you as to eight people, I am going to suggest that you were all mistaken just now when you thought you were eating an apple, and that you were also mistaken when you thought von saw me place the orange into the hat. The fact is the apple is in the bat and the orange has been eaten !

"Xell, I won’t mystify you any 10-iger. This is the way I did that. First I secured two apples exactly alike. I then peeled an orange very carefully by first cutting it in halves, scooping out all the fruit and then dividing up the two halves of the peel, so (9). While the pieces of peel are still damp they must be placed round one of the apples (10). When I have shown the apple and made sure that several people have noted the appearance of it, I cut it up. After it has been eaten, I place the orange in the hat, secretly slip the peel under the lining (11) and then produce the apple completely restored and without even a cut in it.” Hastily expressing his amazement, and shaking the peel out of his hat, our representative begged for further surprises. “Well, just one more,” said the Professor, who had been looking at his watch. He extracted a handkerchief from his questioner’s pocket, twisted it up in the centre, and before the other could utter an indignant protest, he had set fire to it “That’s quite all right,” he said, soothingly, and handed the handkerchief back, quite undamaged. He then explained that he had a. small piece of cambric twisted up and! concealed in his left hand: this he had contrived to get just beyond the handkerchief, when twisting it up, and it was this that he had set fire to!. “And now,” said he, “I will show you a really good disappearing trick of my own. Hundreds of people all over the world are still wondering how I do it. Some of them even follow me about trying to find'out. Now if you will be so good as to lend me half-a-crown But our representative was already half-way down stairs.

RIDDLE-ME-REE. ♦♦ * ’ ~\Vhat could you put in your right hand that you couldn’t transfer to your leftf Yo. ■ left elbow. How could you draw a chalk line round a person out of .which .he couldn’t jump, even though both his feet were freer By drawing it round his waist. Could you sit on a place where it would be impossible for your brother to sitf Yes, if you sat on his knee.

A CATCH. Add 3 to SCI and make the answer, less than 57. Answer : 5G 1-3.