THE IMPENETRABLE SEALED BOX TRICK.

Everyone has now seen the very effective deception of the unaccountable release of a man from within a chest in which he was placed, and the box corded tightly, and all the knots sealed. The man may even have been enveloped in a sack, and tied up in that.

The box is placed in a cabinet and shut up there, the man's voice within being heard up to the last moment through the air-holes in the bottom of the chest, to prove that he has not been spirited away through the box and a trap in the stage.

Explanation.—The chest is such a magic box as those of which we have given diagrams in "The Secret Out," apparently solid, but having a trap-door ingeniously concealed in one side. The man extricates himself from the sack, or the handcuffs, or rope, which may hold his wrists together, and, when in the cabinet, opens the trap. The sides collapse upon him, and the sealed cords fall off, though retaining their positions. In fact, the more they are crossed and interlaced the better, as thus they form a cage around the box and retain the shape they form. The man is now free. He closes the box and the trap (leaving in the sack or removing it), and replaces the cords just as at first. He may now be discovered, in or out of the sack, on the opening of the cabinet doors.

The chest need not be of such dimensions as the novice might imagine, for a man with but little of the acrobat's training can pack himself away in a space much less than appears possible.

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