II. TWO PERSONS, OPERATOR AND MEDIUM
For many years the act generally known as the “Transmission of Thought” was presented by two people, using a talking code. One, a lady, seated blindfolded on the stage, named and described various articles handed to her partner, usually a man, by members of the audience. By a clever arrangement—in which all the articles generally found in the possession of the spectators were classified in groups of, say, ten articles—the framing of the questions indicated the class and the number in one of the lists. Thus a very slight alteration in the wording of a certain question could be made to indicate any particular article.
Successful presentation of this system depended on long practice and devotion to this one trick only. If he lost his partner, the operator faced the necessity of training another assistant—a long and tedious process. In addition to this drawback, the many exposures of the principle in the public press, popular magazines, and books made the modus operandi so widely known that the talking code is now practically obsolete; that is, in the form of questions made by the operator directly to the medium.
A very clever modification of the act, in which the operator does not address the subject directly in any way, is now being used with success. For the details, however, I must refer the reader to the treatise entitled The Calostro Mind Reading Act, by Ralph W. Read, which can be obtained through the magic stores.
Another system has been developed, the silent system. For example, the blindfold used by the subject is so prepared that she can see the movements of the operator and the position in which he stands, the movements of his hands and arms, the direction of his gaze; and all these are used to transmit the required information. Here again long and arduous practice is necessary to acquire sufficient facility in the system before any public performance is possible. However, various artifices have been devised to overcome this difficulty, and some very effective presentations of pretended mind reading can be made with only a little practice and without the old question and answer code or elaborate signaling with the silent system. The following will serve as examples from which other tricks can be devised.
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