HERRMANN’S NEW MARVELLOUS SPIRIT SEANCE. (During the Seance no one will be allowed to enter or leave the auditorium.) INTERMISSION. PART III. Herrmann’s latest thrilling sensational illusion, THE ESCAPE FROM SING SING, Founded on the recent escape of the notorious convicts, Pallister and Roehl, from the famous prison. INTERMISSION. PART IV—FINALE. HERRMANN, With a bouquet of mystic novelties. “The closer you watch the less you see.” Concluding with Herrmann’s mystifying masterpiece, THE MYSTERIOUS SWING. HERE! THERE! NOWHERE! {237} A TWENTIETH CENTURY THAUMATURGIST. “I have, since I was three years old, conversed with a magician, most profound in his art, and yet not damnable.”—SHAKESPEARE; _As You Like It_—V. 2, 68. I. The leading exponent of the magic art in the United States today is the famous Harry Kellar. He makes a specialty of pseudo-clairvoyance, second sight, feats of levitation, spirit cabinets, and mechanical illusions. Seizing upon the craze for Hindoo necromancy, mahatma miracles and the like, he presents many of his tricks and illusions as examples of Eastern thaumaturgy. Unlike Herrmann, who bubbled over with wit and humor and acted the comedian, Kellar assumes a Sphinx-like demeanor and envelopes himself in a mantle of mystery. Herrmann was the tricksy Mephistopheles of Goethe’s _Faust_. Kellar is the Arbaces of Bulwer’s _Last Days of Pompeii_—the Egyptian sorcerer and initiate into the rites of Isis and Osiris; or, better still, the Brahmin adept of Crawford’s _Mr. Isaacs_. Kellar’s entertainments appeal to the scholarly inclined. To see him at work, one is transported in imagination to a Hindoo temple where mahatmas exhibit their miracles. His patter is more or less based on Oriental ideas. For example, “The Yoge’s Lamp,” which is a very fine trick, invented by a German conjurer, Herr Conradi, of Berlin. The effect is as follows: On a pedestal stands a lighted lamp. Enveloping this lamp with a foulard, the magician carries it across the stage and places it upon a small gueridon with a glass top. A portion of the chimney of the lamp is in view all the time, and within the silken folds of the foulard the light may be seen shining through with subdued effect. Kellar now fires a pistol. The foulard drops upon {238} the table, and the big lamp vanishes with lightning rapidity. It seems to melt away. It is a seemingly impossible feat, because the glass-topped table has no possible place of concealment about it. The foulard is afterwards passed to the spectators for examination. I am not at liberty to reveal the secret of this surprising trick. I must preserve a discreet silence, in deference to the wishes of Mr. Kellar. As originally invented by Herr Conradi, the lamp reappears in a frame hanging in the center of the stage. But Kellar’s method I consider more artistic, and in better keeping with the _mise en scène_. Without patter this feat of magic would fall comparatively flat.