Miracle Mongers and Their Methods: A Complete Exposé of the Modus Operandi of Fire Eaters, Heat Resisters, Poison Eaters, Venomous Reptile Defiers, Sword Swallowers, Human Ostriches, Strong Men, Etc.Houdini, Harry
History
Miracle Mongers and Their Methods: A Complete Exposé of the Modus Operandi of Fire Eaters, Heat Resisters, Poison Eaters, Venomous Reptile Defiers, Sword Swallowers, Human Ostriches, Strong Men, Etc.
Houdini, Harry
Magic tricks -- History; Magicians -- Biography
At his first entrance, he drinks four and twenty glasses of luke-warm
water, the first vomit he makes the water seems to be a full deep
claret: you are to observe that his gall-pill in the morning, and so
many glasses of luke-warm water afterwards, will force him into a
sudden capacity to vomit, which vomit upon so much warm water, is for
the most part so violent on him, that he cannot forbear if he would.
You are again to understand that all that comes from him is red of
itself, or has a tincture of it from the first Brazil water; but by
degrees, the more water he drinks, as on every new trial he drinks as
many glasses of water as his stomach will contain, the water that comes
from him will grow paler and paler. Having then made his essay on
claret, and proved it to be of the same complexion, he again drinks
four or five glasses of luke-warm water, and brings forth claret and
beer at once into two several glasses: now you are to observe that the
glass which appears to be claret is rinsed as before, but the beer
glass not rinsed at all, but is still moist with the white-wine
vinegar, and the first strength of the Brazil water being lost, it
makes the water which he vomits up to be of a more pale colour, and
much like our English beer.
He then brings his rouse again, and drinks up fifteen or sixteen
glasses of luke-warm water, which the pail will plentifully afford him:
he will not bring you up the pale Burgundian wine, which, though more
faint of complexion than the claret, he will tell you is the purest
wine in Christendom. The strength of the Brazil water, which he took
immediately before his appearance on the stage, grows fainter and
fainter. This glass, like the first glass in which he brings forth his
claret, is washed, the better to represent the colour of the wine
therein.
The next he drinks comes forth sack from him, or according to that
complexion. Here he does not wash his glass at all; for the strength of
the vinegar must alter what is left of the complexion of the Brazil
water, which he took in the morning before he appeared on the stage.
You are always to remember, that in the interim, he will commonly drink
up four or five glasses of the luke-warm water, the better to provoke
his stomach to a disgorgement, if the first rouse will not serve turn.
He will now (for on every disgorge he will bring you forth a new
colour), he will now present you with white wine. Here also he will
not wash his glass, which (according to the vinegar in which it was
washed) will give it a colour like it. You are to understand, that
when he gives you the colour of so many wines, he never washes the
glass, but at his first evacuation, the strength of the vinegar being
no wise compatible with the colour of the Brazil water.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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