A LITTLE TRICKERY

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVIII, Issue 15, 15 December 1937, Page 19

A LITTLE TRICKERY

I COMMENTS ON ! CHRISTMAS ILLUSIONS

❖ . (Py “Folly.”) % •\ ♦

To be popular at parties around Christmas-time, cacli one of us must be able to perform a spot of magic. 1 History and fiction are crowded wit;i tales of people who wanted to devise something a little different for the next party. Take the nobleman who invited a King to take a dinner snacK and a glass of wine. As the chief course he put on a particularly goodlooking pie. The feature of this pie was that it was stuffed with live birds. It was a novel idea and he had air vents in the pastry, but he did not (as he might have done) hand the King a double-barrelled gun and ' invite him to fetch down Ins own dinner as his wild game panicked around the chandelier. No I He opened the pie and these extraordinary birds actually began to sing I Now liow did he get them to do this singing? That’s a spot of magic which needs some explanation, when you realise how the broadcasting people have to work to get even a nightingal to sing to order. They have to get cordon of employees round this dumb animal and creep forward scraping at violins and tootling on flutes until they are practically playing full blast into the poor bird’s face, whereupon it at last lets loose a passionate sound in self-defence. This very natural protest by the nightingale, which has probably got out of Ills little nest to make it, is considered such a capture that the wireless programme is held up for us to listen to it; so what have the 8.8. C. to say about the birds in this pie which, on the conductor raising his baton and tapping twice on the pile of hot plates, leaned back tlieir heads, opened wide their beaks, and let the audience have it straight from the larynx?

now and again fof a little blackmail money, but Canute would not have gone down in history at the flop he was.

The desire to entertain the guests by putting over some illusion is not confined to human beings or hens. A good illusionist is the life and soul of any rally of ghosts. Here the standard is so high tnat something particularly sensational has to be submitted before a ghost is allowed to go out on the road with it, as a turn. This accounts for the shortage of ghosts and the infrequency of their appearances. But I have seen one. This was at a very old dark and duSty manor house where the Christmas decorations consist ot cobwebs hung between candlesticks. Here a cavalier comes m at the iront door , every Christmas night carrying his head in his hand. There are several explanations of his conduct, but my own is that the first time he came in ho tried to take off his hat with a sweep, but found it too tight a lit; so that he had to get both hands to it with such force that his whole lie.-xl came off with a loud sucking noise, and' ever since then he has only pretended to put it back, so the trick is really a fake. And that is the trouble with ghosts and their tricks; they are all so easy to see through.

Well, we ought all to get something ready for our own party at Christmastime. As there is not much time, my advice is to start in a small way, and see how far you can deceive yourself. Go about saying: “1 will be better ott after Christmas” or “I thought I paid you.” But these, perhaps, are well-known hallucinations. The next stage is to deceive somebody else. Only by .this means can you acquire a confident stage manner. I don’t advise you to start on the boss by rushing ill to advise him that a message lias arrived that his baby has fallen into the copper. True, there will be hearty laughter when lie careers homo in a taxi and finds this was not so, but the etiquette of the profession demands that this be kept for April 1. A better trick for this occasion is the collapsible chair. You sit it in yourself without mishap. On rising, you stealthily extract a secret peg which holds the whole thing together and invite your rich old aunt to be seated. She is immediately thrown with a great clatter, whereupon you hurry forward in a reproving way, murmur something about not believing that she could have been so clumsy, and suggest that the wine has gone to her head as usual. Finally you pick up the chair, surreptitiously replace the peg, and show her liow she should have sat down. As Christmas approaches you will, however, find no shortage of material. Merchants and pedlars specially coached in their duties will arrive to take up trading positions along the kerbstones in the mam. streets, itna they will supply every kind of device with which to ‘‘amuse your friends and astonish your relations.”

A pie was also the chief prop in another effective trick. The originator of this was known as Chief Petty Wizard Horner, and his pie contained plums. He sat facing the audience with his back against the corner so that nobody could see behind him, and the trick was to insert the thumb well into the juice and bring out exactly one plum affixed to the end of it. Now anybody who has tried to'repeat this trick will agree that it is an impossibility. A plum is so constructed that the harder you thrust at it with your thumb the more it skids. Honestly, it is just as hal'd to spear a plum with your thumb as to harpoon a pickled onion with your walking-stick. Even if you so jostle your plum that you drive it into a corner of the dish you simply cannot, -o far as I can see, bayonet the thing with anything blunt. The most you can do is to squash it flat, which sends the stone flipping against the ceiling, where it leaves a splodge, while you cover the adience with red juice. The only man who could do this is known, therefore, to other devoted magicians, as Jack Horner. Some say he did it by secreting a bent pin under his thumbnail. Anyway he was never spotted, and that’s why he has become famous.. To go from the sublime to the ridiculous, the feeblest recorded effort in public was a singularly ambitious feat attempted by a king called Canute. He seems to have taken no trouble to prepare the trick at ail. He simply went on to the beach, followed by a crowd who thought he was going to auction something, and having got there tried to act as traffic policeman to the Atlantic. To-day he would have been arrested as being under the influence.

I do not know what the subtle difference is, but I imagine your relations are ■ astounded because they did not know you were such a congenital idiot, and the friends are amused at the disgusted looks of the relations. There is one novelty which I like particularly. This is a'piece of cardboard which you hand to a girl at a dance, perfcrably one in a new and expensive ball-dress, (die accepts the card', only to find to her' amusement that the underside was smeared with a black sticky mess, and she is greatly tickled by your laughable trick. The whole of Christmas is, anyway, one great piece of confidence trickery. I have often wondered what .great showman invented it. In the Encyclopoedia Santa Claus comes ■ between Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz and get less space than either. They can really tell us nothing about him, except that his name is not Claus but Nicholas. As Old Nick be' goes up the chimney, anj as Santa -Claus he conies down it in a different bat.

He had not prepared any patter to go with the business, and he did in>c even expect to be able to do it himself. Anyway ho said as dismally as he could, “Go back old Sea, would you if you don’t mind.” Of course the sea did nothing of the sort, so he got his feet wet and retired, saying tJiat his next performance would be on the pier at 8 p.m. ; What exasperates the showmen of to-day is that he could have done it. He only needed a quiet tip from the harbourmaster as to the precise time of high-tide. If he had gone along then he could have faced the sea alter it had remorselessly been coming in tor some hours and told it to “About turn!” and the sea, in a cowed nnd stfialthy manner, would, have commenced to recede. No doubt the har-bour-master would have called round

The worst of this great illusion is that being compelled as we are to keep it up, we yet have to buy the presents which he is alleged to give. This, you may say, is poor conjuring, and an expensive mistake. And I agree with you I