SPIRITUALISTS OUTDONE BY CONJURORS.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4494, 14 August 1875, Page 2 (Supplement)

SPIRITUALISTS OUTDONE BY CONJURORS.

The following extract from the London Tima describes the feats practised by certain professed, jugglers, who aro repeating and eclipsing the best performances of the professed spiritualists, for the benefit of London audiences. The. “materialisation” feats of the Eddys arc greatly surpassed by Dr. Lynn, who first dematerialises a man whom he has cut into small pieces, and then materialises him in a well-lighted room. The cabinet tricks of the Davenports, and the “reading'" feats of Poster are better done by these jugglers than they are by any professional medium. And yet, when vulgar impostors claim that tricks of the same nature as those performed by Messrs. Lynn, Maskelyne, and Cooke, but requiring much less skill, are the work of spirits, there , are thousands who actually admit the claim. The Egyptian Hall remains the abode of mysteries suitable to its name. After tailing ancient kingdoms, the jugglers have taken up the much more honest trade of amusing' holiday folks. ' But the wonders worked at the Egyptian Hall explain the history of the power which once belonged to the worker, of legerdemain. Dr. Lynn, for example, who lately filled the large "hall at three and ag'ain at eight o’clock, breaks a watch to pieces and returns it unhurt to its owner, pulls two fine eggs out of a, spectator’s beard, decapitates a pigeon aud thou makes the bird fly (tut of a bottle of sherry. Prom a flower - pot ho produced any flower a fastidious audience choose to name, and-repeated the trick with a hat, which, by a liberal definition of “flower,” was allowed to respond to the request of a pertinacious listener for cauliflower. The cleverest trick is one in which Dr. Lynn reads off proper names written by any persons among the audience on pieces of p.'qmr which are folded up and kept on the stag.; in a bat. In “ Paliiis'cnesia” a gentleman comes on the stage to bo cut up and put together again, and will, we understand, continue to be cut up twice a day during the holidays. In this trick one docs not know whether to admire more the endurance of the victim or the coolness of the operator. Messrs. Maskelyne aud Cooke ; begin hy causing six china dessert plates to ; ttaud up on a table on their edges like the 1 little oysters standing in a-row in “Trenghtho . Ldoking-gL.i.cj,” then to walk about on the <

table, aud then to roll up a sort of spiral staircase. After this comes the “indescribable phenomena seance,” and we have not the intention to describe it. It includes an effort of oratory by Mr. Maskelyuo, and wonderful feats by Mr. Cooke, who is tied up by a committee aud then enclosed in a box. The committee are volunteers from among the audience, and directly he is tied up Mr. Cooke does a number of things all ordinary people would find it difficulty to do when perfectly free. He cuts out figures in paper, drives a nail neatly into the board, and so on, aud finally comes out of his bonds without apparent disturbance of them. The entertainment concludes with a sort of pantomime called “ Will, the Witch and the "Watch,” The skilful jugglers have in this scone the advantageous assistance of Mr. Hasarde and Mrs. Crompton, aud Mr. Hasarde makes every one laugh, while Mr. Maskelyne and Mr. Cooke make’everybody-stare. The entertainers are put in the stocks, locked up in a brass-bound trunk, enclosed in a cabinet, which is raised on thin pedestals above the ground. Of course none of these restraints cause a moment's delay to their powers of evasion. When Mr. Cooke has been put in the cabinet, you know that he will make his next appearance in the orchestra stalls. When Mr. Maskelyne has been locked up in a box, aud the box placed in the larger cabinet, be comes on.the stage the next minute in some entirely fresh character and costume.