Page:The American Boy's Handy Book edition 1.djvu/342

peculiar cold, damp feeling of what seems to be the hand of a mummy will cause the nervous ones to throw it from them in a hurry. After this has made the circuit of the table, the tourist places it upon a waiter in front of him and proceeds to explain the capture of a very curious sea-urchin, which turns out to be a pincushion with the points of pins sticking out all over it. Next comes a piece of the Japanese weeping crystal from a cave in the centre of Simoda—simply a piece of ice; and so the game continues with as many queer specimens as the ingenuity of the tourist can invent. A glib talker can so excite the imagination of his hearers as to often make them believe for the time that the object they are handling under the table is genuine. When, after the game is over, the contents of the tourist's basket are exposed for the audience to examine by sight as well as touch, there is always a great laugh as each one recognizes some familiar object, which, with the help of a dark room and a vivid imagination, sent the chills down his back.

This is more in the nature of a trick than a game, but as anything that creates surprise or approaches the wonderful always proves attractive and entertaining, I introduce this plan of reading the contents of a folded paper by laying it across the forehead. The mind-reader seats himself at a table at one end of the room; the audience must not approach nearer than five feet, and should be seated in a semicircle in front of him. Slips of paper, all the same size and shape, are then distributed among the audience, with the request that each one write thereon a short sentence, plainly and in English. While they are busy writing, the mind-reader, or medium, is preparing for the trial by first making sundry passes across his forehead, rubbing each arm slowly from shoulder to wrist, and then sitting calm and silent, staring at the wall. Each person folds his