PRACTICAL JOKING.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1246, 30 September 1884, Page 3

PRACTICAL JOKING.

The art of practical joking, carried to such perfefction by Theodore Hook, certainly does seem to be dying out. The hoaxes of the present century cannot, however, be compared to those of the middle when practical joking was carried on with great vigor by all classes, but more especially with the well-to-do, who caused to be contrived mechanical instruments of a peculiar nature. The Chastel d’Hesdin, the favorite residence of Philip of Burgundy, was honeycombed with deceptions of ail kinds. The pleasure grounds of the estate were covered with leg-traps, set more for the purpose of catching the limbs of visitors than those of tramps ; and in the Chastel itself there was no room that did not contain trap-doors, pitfalls, sliding panels, or other contrivances whereby the visitor would suddenly find himself in a predicament. Some of the machinery he worked with his own hands, but the rest worked by a guest stepping on a hidden spring or touching a certain panel in the wall. For instance, a stranger on reaching the middle of a room would be instantly covered with soot or flour, the result of a trap-door overhead having opened. In one room there was fixed beside the door the mechanical figure of a knight, armed with a short stick. This figure, so placed, seized all intruders and gave them a sound thrashing. It is related that on one occasion Philip was himself caught by this figure, and held in such a position that before he could free himself he received a severe beating. In the great gallery there was fixed to the wall a figure known as the Prophesying Hermit, and at the feet of this figure there was a trap-door. While the fortune-telling was going on a portion of the ceiling opened and flour and water poured down, appropriate thunder and lightning following in quick succession. The trap in the floor then opened and the guest fell into a sack of feathers. At the entrance to a minor gallery three small pipes were fixed in each wall, one lot filled with water, the other with flour and soot. But the most elaborate trick of all was that in which all the guests were duped. Adjoining the great gallery there was a large room filled with armed figures. vVhile the guests were dining cries would be heard proceeding from this room, and the company would naturally rush upstairs to ascertain the cause. The mechanical figures in armour then moved from their places and drove the victims of the joke out of the room into a passage the floor of which opened and they were precipitated into a cellar three feet deep with water. Philip seldom received a second visit at Hesdin from the one party.