THE INVISIBLE GIRL. 229 



returned from all the trumpets, and the sound issued 

 with sufficient intensity to be heard by an ear applied to 

 any of them, and yet it was so weak that it appeared to 

 come from a person of very diminutive size. Hence the 

 sound was supposed to come from an invisible girl, 

 though the real speaker was a full-grown woman. The 

 invisible lady conversed in different languages, sang 

 beautifully, and made the most lively and appropriate 

 remarks on the persons in the room. 



This exhibition was obviously far more wonderful 

 than the speaking heads which we have described, as 

 the latter invariably communicated with a wall, or with 

 a pedestal through which pipes could be carried into the 

 next apartment. But the ball M and its trumpets com- 

 municated with nothing through which sound could be 

 conveyed. The spectator satisfied himself by examination 

 that the ribands 6, 6, were real ribands, which concealed 

 nothing, and which could convey no sound, and as he 

 never conceived that the ordinary piece of frame -work A B, 

 could be of any other use than its apparent one of support- 

 ing the sphere M, and defending it from the spectators, 

 he was left in utter amazement respecting the origin of 

 the sound, and his surprise was increased by the difference 

 between the sounds which were uttered and those of 

 ordinary speech. 



Though the spectators were thus deceived by their 

 nvn reasoning, yet the process of deception was a very 

 simple one. In two of the horizontal railings A, A, 

 Fig. 38, opposite the trumpet mouths T, there was an 

 aperture communicating with a pipe or tube which went 

 to the vertical post B, and descending it, as shown at 

 T A A, Fig. 39, went beneath the floor // in the direc- 

 tion p. p, and entered the apartment N, where the invisible 

 lady sat. On the side of the partition about Ji, there 

 was a small hole, through which the lady saw what was 





