ILLUSIONS EXTRAORDINARY.

Evening Star, Issue 3461, 26 March 1874, Page 3

ILLUSIONS EXTRAORDINARY.

> The Me\bourhe* * Argus ’ ‘sayis 1 : —“That singular sect which believes that a mahogany dining table may constitute the tangible Jink between this world and the next, and that Syrqj ha-veyiegeaerated into angrammatical|ioetma'sterß in a refclmof vapmy shadows, mus't begin xo find itself in a* Very unpleasant predicament. All the serio-comic manifestations of which wo have heard so much are b^:ypf Kbjfi ;a couple of English conjurors, who are giving their entertainments at the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, and are beating the “ mediums ” hollow. The physical 11 which ereduloua people sitting ia a circle suppose to be the work of tricksy spirits who are so restless and uncorafprjable in heaven that they come loafing round their old haunts upon earth, and making fools of elderly gobemouches and juvenile simpletons, are all efahctM by (Messrs MaskolyaeVand Cook, «on a wen-lighted stage, in the (ft‘ a large audience, any of whom may remain on the platform during the progress of the more mysterious qf j theptHcka. irons and flitches of bacoti do f nof appearance, but tables execute a pda stul , and bound into the air ; a walking-stick enters upon a

promenade ex proprfy and a lady rises from the floor khd ‘‘levitates” after the manner of Mr Home. As to the Davenport Brothers, they are nowhere in comparison tvpith* thbsh ’ illbskmists,■ who;makenusfc pfj-h mahogany box so small that a person can only be got into it by dint of considerable P9fflP^ io £f-WA dose, packing. .‘‘The things done ‘bfith'j bbtfi I 'b6x ■'ahif^cabinet, l ’ observes the Pall Mall Gazette, “are rather to be seen than described. But when a performer in the dress of a sailor, locked in the box, made additionally secure by cordage, with seals placed upon its knots, is found able at leisure,to assume the appearance Of n i g r orilia l ,'l!o , -^abe / f f captivity and to return to it without tampering with the lock of his prison or disturbing its fastenings in asy way, Ijhe, amazement of the spectators is extreme, and their sense of the completeness of the illusion is testified by the But the most amusahg- part obthb stoifyUs, tbWi the Ajdri'tiialists credulous to the last—insist upon it that these clever feats of the illusionists are perfofined,, agency.: and.that the performers are ’spiritualists witKbdt 1 knowing it. So ineradicable is superstition from the hnman mind.