FAKEERS OF THE EAST

[Music] this way ladies and gentlemen and see how the hand is quicker than the eye as far back as history goes we find that conjuring and magic tricks have always fascinated human beings of all ages and of all classes little boys and big boys young boys and old boys with long whiskers even little girls stare wide-eyed at the magician when he is performing tricks watch this Arab fakir now and see if your eyes are as quick as his hand here he is right out in the open or he can't have any trap doors or mirrors or trained Confederates to help him I tell you he's gotta be good now how on earth did he get all those flags into his mouth at the same time you tell me you know I think they ought to send him to the Geneva to do some Valley hoeing for the League of Nations say his mouth must be like the subway always room for one more no what's he up to oh I see he's showing us how to reduce the high cost of living by getting eggs without having to buy them from the grocer's I calls it unfair competition I do this is a good trick watch it closely the magician pulls out yards and yards of cotton strings and breaks it into many many little pieces then he sets all these pieces on fire to make them burn faster he blows on us well I guess that's the end of that string all right he that's what you think he says for the string it's in one piece again and it doesn't show any trace of the fire believe me that some trick but look it isn't finished yet where the magician rattles a box and plays the tune on his Magic Flute there asure something doing [Music] well of all things that string is burning again and right in his mouth to say let's give them a hand now if any bright little boy in the audience can figure out how this trick is done I wish you would write to me about it I saw the trick several times when I was in India well I never could guess the answer but perhaps you're better at guessing than I am anyway it's a fine trick but these fakers are not all alike here we have a fine looking Hindu trying to attract our attention by a few simpler tricks the bag seems to be empty all right doesn't it and yet he draws an egg out of it and now the egg of the coin say did you ever see a coin walk up a hill before well there it is but the bird trick is his best trick it's the most puzzling trick I ever saw watch him very closely now the basket is empty his sleeves are rolled up he tosses the toy bird up in the air and then pounds it good and plenty with his fist the cloth has nothing fastened to it on either side after all he's sitting right on the ground in the courtyard of our hotel with just a plain piece of matting spread before him what can he be fussing with under that cloth can we begin to wonder what's happened to the toy bird well can you beat it a whole flock of birds and they are alive - oh yes very much alive but when the magician calls back they come that's another mystery that I was never able to solve [Music] there is no monkey business about this trick it's all goats and it just shows how clever of goat can be when a man has the patience to train it I wonder if a man would keep his patience if some slick circus fella tried to get his ghost and now the most famous trick of all the mango trick the fakir shows us a mango seed he places it in a little pile of dirt and he waves his magic wand in circles then he covers the little pile of dirt with a cloth and jabbers a lot of hocus-pocus dominocus something like that this is one of the most popular tricks in the east every traveler to India has seen it and been mystified just as Iowa it's always performed in the open air without the help of any apparatus and when the cloth is removed we have a live fresh young mango plant 18 inches high roots and all explains that one if you can I can't there is no deception in this trick it's just one of the many examples of the extent to which a faker will torture himself to make a living this man has developed his eye muscle to such a degree that he can lift a stone and I mean quite a heavy stone with his eyes by inserting a small disk under each eyelid oh it's easy enough to see how he does it but it's hard to understand how he bears it well well well the old shell game the oldest conjuring trick in the world a hand is quicker than the eye this pic was used thousands of years ago to entertain and mystify the Egyptians the ancient Greeks and the Romans fell for it all the nations of the world know it now in our country it is rare cat circuses and a County Fair we all know how it's done but the performer is so quick in his motions that we are usually fooled when we tried to guess under which cup the dice or the pellet are to be found many of us have bet money on the issue but most of us of law this Baker is quite the smoothest and fastest actor I've ever seen I watched him many times just for the squad of it I made all kinds of bets with myself but I always lost no review of Oriental conjuring tricks would be complete without including the ever-present snake charmer the snake charmers have chosen the most dangerous of all the poison snakes the king cobra one little sting and a man would have about 60 seconds to live how do they do it who knows maybe a tip note ISM or maybe the snakes react to the sound of the flu anyhow it's a grand show so with an eyeful of magic and an earful of weird music we're going home to see if we can figure it all out [Music]