Part 1 (1/2)

The Miracle Mongers, an Expose.

by Harry Houdini.

PREFACE

”All wonder,” said Samuel Johnson, ”is the effect of novelty on ignorance.” Yet we are so created that without something to wonder at we should find life scarcely worth living. That fact does not make ignorance bliss, or make it ”folly to be wise.” For the wisest man never gets beyond the reach of novelty, nor can ever make it his boast that there is nothing he is ignorant of; on the contrary, the wiser he becomes the more clearly he sees how much there is of which he remains in ignorance. The more he knows, the more he will find to wonder at.

My professional life has been a constant record of disillusion, and many things that seem wonderful to most men are the every-day commonplaces of my business. But I have never been without some seeming marvel to pique my curiosity and challenge my investigation. In this book I have set down some of the stories of strange folk and unusual performers that I have gathered in many years of such research.

Much has been written about the feats of miracle-mongers, and not a little in the way of explaining them. Chaucer was by no means the first to turn shrewd eyes upon wonder-workers and show the clay feet of these popular idols. And since his time innumerable marvels, held to be supernatural, have been exposed for the tricks they were. Yet to-day, if a mystifier lack the ingenuity to invent a new and startling stunt, he can safely fall back upon a trick that has been the favorite of pressagents the world over in all ages. He can imitate the Hindoo fakir who, having thrown a rope high into the air, has a boy climb it until he is lost to view. He can even have the feat photographed. The camera will click; nothing will appear on the developed film; and this, the performer will glibly explain, ”proves” that the whole company of onlookers was hypnotized! And he can be certain of a very profitable following to defend and advertise him.

So I do not feel that I need to apologize for adding another volume to the shelves of works dealing with the marvels of the miracle-mongers.

My business has given me an intimate knowledge of stage illusions, together with many years of experience among show people of all types.

My familiarity with the former, and what I have learned of the psychology of the latter, has placed me at a certain advantage in uncovering the natural explanation of feats that to the ignorant have seemed supernatural. And even if my readers are too well informed to be interested in my descriptions of the methods of the various performers who have seemed to me worthy of attention in these pages, I hope they will find some amus.e.m.e.nt in following the fortunes and misfortunes of all manner of strange folk who once bewildered the wise men of their day. If I have accomplished that much, I shall feel amply repaid for my labor.

HOUDINI.

CHAPTER ONE

FIRE WORs.h.i.+P.--FIRE EATING AND HEAT RESISTANCE.--IN THE MIDDLE AGES.--AMONG THE NAVAJO INDIANS.--FIRE-WALKERS OF j.a.pAN.--THE FIERY ORDEAL OF FIJI.

Fire has always been and, seemingly, will always remain, the most terrible of the elements. To the early tribes it must also have been the most mysterious; for, while earth and air and water were always in evidence, fire came and went in a manner which must have been quite unaccountable to them. Thus it naturally followed that the custom of deifying all things which the primitive mind was unable to grasp, led in direct line to the fire-wors.h.i.+p of later days.

That fire could be produced through friction finally came into the knowledge of man, but the early methods entailed much labor.

Consequently our ease-loving forebears cast about for a method to ”keep the home fires burning” and hit upon the plan of appointing a person in each community who should at all times carry a burning brand. This arrangement had many faults, however, and after a while it was superseded by the expedient of a fire kept continually burning in a building erected for the purpose.

The Greeks wors.h.i.+ped at an altar of this kind which they called the Altar of Hestia and which the Romans called the Altar of Vesta. The sacred fire itself was known as Vesta, and its burning was considered a proof of the presence of the G.o.ddess. The Persians had such a building in each town and village; and the Egyptians, such a fire in every temple; while the Mexicans, Natches, Peruvians and Mayas kept their ”national fires” burning upon great pyramids. Eventually the keeping of such fires became a sacred rite, and the ”Eternal Lamps” kept burning in synagogues and in Byzantine and Catholic churches may be a survival of these customs.

There is a theory that all architecture, public and private, sacred and profane, began with the erection of sheds to protect the sacred fire.

This naturally led men to build for their own protection as well, and thus the family hearth had its genesis.

Another theory holds that the keepers of the sacred fires were the first public servants, and that from this small beginning sprang the intricate public service of the present.

The wors.h.i.+p of the fire itself had been a legacy from the earliest tribes; but it remained for the Rosicrucians and the fire philosophers of the Sixteenth Century under the lead of Paracelsus to establish a concrete religious belief on that basis, finding in the Scriptures what seemed to them ample proof that fire was the symbol of the actual presence of G.o.d, as in all cases where He is said to have visited this earth. He came either in a flame of fire, or surrounded with glory, which they conceived to mean the same thing.

For example: when G.o.d appeared on Mount Sinai (Exod. xix, 18) ”The Lord descended upon it in fire.” Moses, repeating this history, said: ”The Lord spake unto you out of the midst of fire” (Deut. iv, 12). Again, when the angel of the Lord appeared to Moses out of the flaming bush, ”the bush burned with fire and the bush was not consumed” (Exod. iii, 3). Fire from the Lord consumed the burnt offering of Aaron (Lev. ix, 24), the sacrifice of Gideon (Judg. vi, 21), the burnt offering of David (1 Chron. x.x.xi, 26), and that at the dedication of King Solomon's temple (Chron. vii, 1). And when Elijah made his sacrifice to prove that Baal was not G.o.d, ”the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust and the water that was in the trench.” (1 Kings, xviii, 38.)

Since sacrifice had from the earliest days been considered as food offered to the G.o.ds, it was quite logical to argue that when fire from Heaven fell upon the offering, G.o.d himself was present and consumed His own. Thus the Paracelsists and other fire believers sought, and as they believed found, high authority for continuing a part of the fire wors.h.i.+p of the early tribes.

The Theosophists, according to Hargrave Jennings in ”The Rosicrucians,”

called the soul a fire taken from the eternal ocean of light, and in common with other Fire-Philosophers believed that all knowable things, both of the soul and the body, were evolved out of fire and finally resolvable into it; and that fire was the last and only-to-be-known G.o.d.

In pa.s.sing I might call attention to the fact that the Devil is supposed to dwell in the same element.

Some of the secrets of heat resistance as practiced by the dime-museum and sideshow performers of our time, secrets grouped under the general t.i.tle of ”Fire-eating,” must have been known in very early times. To quote from Chambers' ”Book of Days”: ”In ancient history we find several examples of people who possessed the art of touching fire without being burned. The Priestesses of Diana, at Castabala, in Cappadocia, commanded public veneration by walking over red-hot iron.