Robinson calls himself “Chung Ling Soo, he of the One Button
[mandarin], Royal Chinese Conjurer.” Chung Ling Soo, in the
vernacular of Confucius, means Double Luck, or extra good luck.
Wherever he goes he puts on exhibition in the lobby of the theatre
the resplendent robes of his ancestors—“a piece of sacrilege,” says
an English paper, “no Chinaman the world has ever known has been
guilty of before. Some of the exhibits are from the Imperial palace
at Pekin.” These gorgeous garments were doubtless purchased in some
Chinese bazaar in London. According to a Holloway journal, Robinson
is the possessor of a wonderful collection of Oriental embroideries,
carvings, armor, and swords, and last but not least, “a splendid
{286} palanquin which cost the Chinese equivalent of 1,000 guineas.
It was presented to him by the late Dowager Empress of China, and is
constructed of solid ebony inlaid with gold and precious stones.”
In this palanquin, Robinson comes on the stage to perform his
bullet-catching feat, supposed to be a replica of a similar adventure
when he was attacked by “Boxers” in China. This is Herrmann’s old
trick, with an Oriental setting. Some years ago, a German-American
wizard, Prof. Mingus, invented a method of catching live gold fish
on the end of a line fixed to an ordinary bamboo fishing rod. The
line being cast in the air, a gold fish appeared dangling upon the
hook. The fish was then thrown into a bowl of water and shown to the
audience. Several fish were caught in this manner. Robinson adopted
this trick with great success. Pestered to death for an explanation
of the mystery by his journalistic friends, he finally condescended
to explain (?) it. He thus described it in the _News of the World_,
Holloway, England, April 9, 1905:
“Anyone may know how Chung does the goldfish trick, but it does not
follow that having been told one can do it. When Chung Ling Soo
makes casts in the air with his rod and line, little Suce Seen,
the Celestial handmaiden, stands meekly some yards away, holding
a glass bowl of water. The hook is a powerful magnet, and if one
could examine the goldfish caught, one would detect pieces of metal
attached to the bodies of the finny captures. The live goldfish
repose in little Suce Seen’s sleeve, and when a more than usually
skillful cast brings the magnetic bait for a second into the interior
of the girl’s sleeve, a ‘catch’ has at once been effected, and the
fish is seen dangling and wriggling in the air at the end of the
line.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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