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MIRACLE-MONGERS AND THEIR METHODS
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shown here being used throughout her performance.
These explanations are taken from the French periodical La Nature, in which Mr. Nelson W. Perry thus sums up the attitude of the public in regard to this class of performance: "Electricity is a mysterious agent; therefore everything mysterious is electric." Of the performance of the Electric Girl this magazine says:
It is a question of a simple application of the elementary principles of the laws of mechanics, chapter of equilibrium.
We propose to point out here a certain number of such artifices and to describe a few of the experiments, utilizing for this purpose the data furnished by Mr. Perry, as well as those resulting from our own observations.
One of the experiments consists in having a man or several men hold a cane or a billiard cue horizontally above the head, as shown in Fig. 1. On pushing with one hand, the girl forces back two or three men, who, in unstable equilibrium and under the oblique action of the thrust
