All who have heard Prof. Kennedy or Val Vose with their funny little figures have wondered how they managed to produce such an effect upon their audience--to completely delude them into the belief that the speech came from the moving lips of the little wooden heads and not from the closed and motionless labials of the ventriloquists. Both gentlemen are thoroughly familiar with their art, and the entertainment they give may be taken as a sample of the possibilities of ventriloquism. The history of the art goes back to Biblical times, but not until the eighteenth century have we anecdotes of the remarkable performances of men endowed with the gift. The earliest notice of the illusion, as carried out in modern times, has reference to Louis Brabant _valet de chambre_ to Francis I. Having been rejected by the parents of a rich heiress he wished to wed, he waited until the father was dead; then he visited the widow, whom he caused to hear the voice of her husband coming from above commanding her to give their daughter in marriage to Louis, that he (the father) might be relieved from purgatory. The widow was only too glad to comply. Now, Louis wanted a wedding portion, so he went to one Cornu, a rich, miserly, and usurious banker at Lyons, whom he terrified into giving him ten thousand crowns by the old trick of parent and purgatory. The works of M. L'Abbe La Chapelle, issued 1772, contain descriptions of the ventriloquial achievements of Baron Mengen at Vienna; and those of M. St. Gille, near Paris, are equally interesting and astonishing. The former ingeniously constructed a doll with movable lips, which he could readily control by a movement of the fingers under the dress; and with this automaton he was accustomed to hold humorous and satirical dialogues. He ascribed proficiency in his art to the frequent gratification of a propensity for counterfeiting the cries of the lower animals, and the voices of persons with whom he was in contact.