VENTRILOQUISM EXPLAINED. 233 



had been taken into the other apartment. This wardrobe 

 was almost always opened before he retired to bed, and 

 the door being a little too tight, it gradually forced itself 

 open with a sort of dull sound, resembling the note of a 

 drum. As the door had only started half an inch out of 

 its place, its change of place never attracted attention. 

 The sound, indeed, seemed to come in a different direction, 

 and from a greater distance. 



When sounds so mysterious in their origin are heard 

 by persons predisposed to a belief in the marvellous, 

 their influence over the mind must be very powerful. 

 An inquiry into their origin, if it is made at all, will be 

 made more in the hope of confirming than of removing 

 the original impression, and the unfortunate victim of 

 his own fears will also be the willing dupe of his own 

 judgment. 



This uncertainty with respect to the direction of sound 

 is the foundation of the art of ventriloquism. If we place 

 ten men in a row at such a distance from us that they 

 are included in the angle within which we cannot judge 

 of the direction of sound, and if in a calm day each of 

 them speaks in succession, we shall not be able with 

 closed eyes to determine from which of the ten men any 

 of the sounds proceeds, and we shall be incapable of 

 perceiving that there is any difference in the direction of 

 the sounds emitted by the two uttermost. If a man and 

 a child are placed within the same angle, and if the man 

 speaks with the accent of a child without any correspond- 

 ing motion in his mouth or face, we shall necessarily 

 believe that the voice comes from the child : nay, if the 

 child is so distant from the man that the voice actually 

 appears to us to come from the man, we will still continue 

 in the belief that the child is the speaker ; and this con- 

 viction would acquire additional strength if the child 

 favoured the deception by accommodating its features and 



