occur to one person in many thousand, and that most of the audience would have been willing to affirm on oath that they saw the last box so emerge. The psychology of the process, then, consists in inducing the spectator to draw the natural inference, which, in this case, it has been carefully arranged shall be a wrong one. Deception becomes real according to the skill with which the conditions of reality are imitated. The dexterity and training of the professional conjurer are measured by the fidelity with which he mimics the movements which are supposed to be done. The life-likeness of the movement with which the late Hermann could take up an imaginary orange with both hands from a table (the orange was really let down in a trap on the table as the hands were placed over it), and carry it over to another table where it mysteriously disappeared or passed through a hat, was quite irresistible. Equally so was his palming, or his production of objects from his person, or out of the air, or in out-of-the-way places. The mimetic movements accompanying these actions were so vividly realistic, the misdirection of the attention was so perfect, as to produce a complete hallucination of the appearance of objects from places from which they never emerged. When this was preceded by an actual sleight-of-hand movement, a true hallucination resulted; for example, in the trick of the flying cards which were skilfully thrown to all parts of the auditorium, a card was occasionally thrown which seemed to disappear mysteriously in mid-air; but in reality no card had been thrown but only the movements of throwing it imitated. A rabbit was tossed up in the air two or three times, and then disappeared at the report of a pistol; in reality the rabbit was not tossed at all on the last apparent throw, but was slipped into the hollow of the table.[4] The more closely the conditions that lead to correct inferences in ordinary experiences are imitated, the more successful will be the illusion; and a useful principle of conjuring illusions is to _first actually do_ that which you _afterward_ wish the audience to _believe that you continue to do_. Thus, when coins are caught in mid-air and thrown into a hat, a few are really thrown in; but the others are palmed in the hand holding the hat, and allowed to fall when the other hand makes the appropriate movements. Some of the rings to be mysteriously linked together are given to the audience for examination and found to contain no opening, the audience at once concluding that the rings which the performer retains are precisely like them. In general, to gain the confidence of the person to be deceived is the first step alike in sleight-of-hand and in criminal fraud. III