WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 130, 1 March 1928, Page 8

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

NOTES AT RANDOM

(By

T.D.H.)

America is not pleased with France for not signing its proposed anti-war treaty—and France, maybe, remembers that America has refused to touch with a pitchfork the League of Nations founded by an American President.

Has anybody ever really seen the Indian rope trick ? There was much correspondence on this point in the London “Daily Mail” nine years back, and in the January “Fortnightly Review” that famous traveller, Mrs. Rosita Forbes, has something to say on the subject. In the rope trick as usually described, a rope is thrown up into the air and remains taut and firm, suspended from nothing, while a man climbs up it. A writer signing himself “A Sergeant in the East Surreys” began the “Daily 'Mail” correspondence in 1919, by describing how, in the war, he and two score of his comrades saw the trick done at Ferzapore.

Mr S. W. Clarke, editor of the “Magic Circular,” the professional conjurer’s paper, promptly wtotc to the “Dailv Mail” and said every conjurer who had visited Indit. tor -,ears Had sought in vain for romc one to perform the trick. When the King, as Prince of Wales went to India in 1902. the country was scoured to find a performer who could do it. Lord Lonsdale. even offered £10.900 for a sight of it. Messrs. Maskebne and Devant for years had .a standing offer of a princely remuneration ♦“ anyone who would go and do the trick in London. Never was aurone found to perform the fabled feat.

Following this letter Lieut.. F W. Holmes, V.C., M.M.. of the Yorkshire Regiment, wrote seating that lie had seen the trick performed in India jtl June, 1917, and had photographed >t, and in *h? “Daily Mail” one o< his photographs was produced. '1 his showed a tapered rope, about 11 feet long, with a well develoned adiflt at the. too of it. The rope was curved, and Lieut. Holmes’s theory wp= that rom-aaled a minted bamboo. To this Mr.-Nevile Maskelvne wrote stating that theft: were two rope tricks. One was the legendary trick—“never seen, because never accomplished”.—and the other was the trick in which a “fake” rope was used. The latter, said Mr. Mackelyne, v>as obviously what Lieut. Holmes had seen.

Soon after this a correspondent forwarded a clipping from the “Civil and Military Gazett"” of Lahore, under date of 1898, in which was. described an even more startling variation of the genuine rope trick. Many persons formerly resident in India wrote other letters expressing the greatest scepticism as to any such trick having ever been performed. and in “Nature” about the same date Mr. G. Huddleston stated that during thirty years spent in India he had studied Indian conjuring, - and knew many of the best conjurers between Calcutta and Delhi, but never found one who had seen the rope trick, much less performed it himself. *< * *

Now we have Mrs. Rosita Forbes writing as follows in the “Fortnightly Review”: “When I was in India, like evetvone else, I constantly heard of the rope trick, in which a juggler throws a cord in the air. It remains as stiff as a pillar, and his assistant climbs up it and disappears off the top! Not only was I never able to see.this trick myself, but I never met anyone who had until King Hakon of Norway told me that it had been performed in his honour at Tunis. One of liis suite took a photograph at the moment when the juggler was almost at the top of the rope, but the developed negative showed the rope and both jugglers on the ground.”

Mrs. Forbes also relates that she herself took a photograph with similar results when the well known mango trick was performed before her. In this trick a niancm seed is planted tn a little pile of earth, a basket is placed over it, a few words mumbled, and the basket’ is removed and a little plant w seen sprouting. The basket is replaced and presently a full-grown bush almost i pushes the basket off the top leaves. In this case the photograph taken when the. bush was fully grown showed nothing at all but the little heap of earth. Her conclusion was both feats were performed by mass hypnotism of the spectators.

Mrs. Forbes also avers that she has seen much more remarkable things than mango tricks. In Cairo one Saved ■Mimed chimed to be able to raise the dead, and Mrs. Forbes once gained admittance to one of his seances, when, she relates, “amidst every possible effect of derkness. incense, smoke and wind nil cf which might have been arranged the marician trifled with a science which he had perverted to Ins own rs-.«i mil o'ised the most horrible forms I have ever seen. My impression is that he was near y as terrified as his audience, and when, instead of the dead Sufi he had promised us he produced an inhuman y'S' on towered out of the suddenly non-ex stent roof, he quite franklv took refuge in prayer. I did not wait for any further manifestations!” • ♦ •

Tn Morocco, Mulai Sadiq et Baisunt. cousin of the famous chieftain Raisuh of that country, so much in the news years ago with his revolt, once performed a remarkable feat for Mrs. Forbes He told her that after serenteen vears’ practice be had learnt to “raise jinns.” In his first effort after five vears he had raised an inhuman monster, similar aPFU’/ntN’ to produced by Saved Ahmed. For bis visitors benefit Mulai Saaiq agreed to summon a member of an Arabian college in the Yemen with whom he had been in contact.

In the bare card in bright sunshine Mulai Sadiq drew a pentagram in the dust and sat and stared at.it, with Mrs. Forbes close bv his side. All at once, writes that lady, “there was a man sitting in the pentagram. To say he appeared suddenly’ would not express the effect for it feemed lie bad always been there, though I had only just noticed him. There was nothing startling or frightening. He was rather pale and rather hot. I could see sweat on his forehead under the veil worn by Yemen sherifs. He took off his sandals, with the enormous woven and dyed grass straps familiar to Arabia, but unknown in Morocco. His costume consisted of the Yemen striped cloth.” For some time Mulai Sadiq and the stranger talked in normal voices “After that,” adoi Mrs. Forbes, “he was gone, but again I had no impre'-sion of disappearance.”

Mrs. Forbes’s conclusion was that by means inexplicable to us the wise men of the East can give to purely mental concepts a physical appearance, and can so separate mind and body that the former has an existence of its °' vn - On four other occasions in Africa and Asia, she states, has she seen variations of what Mulai Sadiq showed her. Tominv was meandering homewaid much later than his usual supper time. A friend of Hm family who happened to meet him sa'd: “Wliv. Tommy, aren’t you afraid you 11 be late for tea ?" "Nope,” replied Tommy, “I’ve got tlie tneai-’?