Many jugglers are so impudent as to assert that the voice does not proceed from a man, but is produced by machinery, in the same manner as the music of an organ. Some, like the last whom I saw, are more modest or timorous, and give evasive answers to the questions asked them respecting the cause of the voice, with as much art as those who exhibit with balls and cups. Concerning these speaking machines, however, different opinions are entertained. Some affirm that the voice issues from the machine; others, that the juggler answers himself, by speaking as ventriloquists do, or by having the power to alter his voice; and some believe that the answers are given by a man somewhere concealed. The violence with which these opinions are maintained exposes the juggler often to the danger of losing his life; for, when the illusion is detected, the populace, who in part suffer themselves willingly to be deceived, and who even pay the juggler for his deception, imagine that they have a right to avenge themselves for being imposed on. The machines are sometimes broken; and the owners of them are harshly treated as impostors. For my part, I do not see why a juggler, with a speaking machine, is a more culpable impostor than he who pretends to breathe out flames and to swallow boiling oil, or to make puppets speak, as in the Chinese shadows. The spectators pay for the pleasure which they receive from a well-concealed deception, and with greater satisfaction the more difficult it is for them to discover it. But the person who speaks or sings through a puppet, is so well hid, that people of considerable penetration have imagined that such concealment was impossible. At present this art is well known. Either a child or a woman is concealed in the juggler’s box; or some person, placed in a neighbouring apartment, speaks into the end of a pipe which proceeds through the wall to the puppet, and which conveys the answers to the spectators. The juggler gives every necessary assistance to the person by signs previously agreed on. I was once shown, in company with M. Stock, upon promising secrecy, the assistant in another apartment, standing before the pipe, with a card in his hand on which the signs were marked; and he had been brought into the house so privately that the landlady was ignorant of the circumstance. The juggler, however, acknowledged that he did not exhibit without fear; and that he would not venture to stay long at a place like Göttingen, or to return with his Turks, though the populace were so civil as to permit him to depart peaceably with what he had gained.