Robert-Houdin, in attempting to expose the trick, makes two flagrant errors. First he claims that "by dint of special practice on the part of our mediums, the thumb is made to lie flat in the hand, when the whole assumes a cylindrical form of scarcely greater diameter than the wrist"; and second that the Davenport Brothers had trained themselves to see in the dark. [Illustration: Announcement used by the Davenport Brothers on their return to London, England, after their tour of the Continent in April, 1868. From the Harry Houdini Collection.] As releasing myself from fastenings of all sorts, from ropes to strait-jackets, has been my profession for twenty years, I am in a position to contradict Robert-Houdin's first claim positively. I have met thousands of persons who claimed that the rope, as well as the handcuff trick, was accomplished by folding the hand together or making the wrist larger than the hand, but never have I met men or women who could make their hands smaller than their wrists. I have even gone so far as to have iron bands made and press my hands together, hoping eventually to make my hands smaller than my wrists, but this has failed, too. Even if the entire thumb were cut away, I believe it would still be impossible to slip a rope that was properly bound around the wrist. You may take any cuff of the adjustable make, or a ratchet cuff, place it about a small woman's wrist, and you will find that even she will be unable to slip her wrists. I do not mean by this any hand-cuff that will not come to any size, or the common cuffs which when locked will lock only to a certain size, but I mean a cuff that can be locked and adjusted to any size of wrist. In rope-tying, the principal trick is to allow yourself to be tied according to certain methods of crossing your hands or wrists, so that by eventually straightening your hands you have made enough room to allow them to slip out very easily. It is not always the size of the wrist that counts. It is the manner of holding your hands when the knots are being tied. The gift of seeing in the dark, with which Robert-Houdin endowed the Davenports, is equally preposterous. Professor Hoffmann defends Robert-Houdin by citing instances of prisoners who had been confined in cells for an indefinite period and who had learned to see in the dark. This is quite true, but they did not alternate daylight and darkness. Eminent opticians and oculists inform me that the faculty of seeing in the dark cannot be acquired by parties like the Davenports, who spent most of their time in the light. While the Davenports were pioneers in rope-tying and cabinet séances, had Robert-Houdin been the clever sleight-of-hand performer and inventor he claims to have been, these tricks would have been clear and solvable to him. But as he obviously joined the ranks of the amazed and bewildered masses, making only a futile attempt to explain the performances, he convicts himself of ignorance regarding his own art.