As I have already stated, ventriloquism is not a gift; it is an acquirement. It is based upon the difficulty the ear experiences in judging cor­rectly the direction of sound, and the ease with which it may be misled in this respect. A little experiment will illustrate my meaning.

In a company of people let a willingly disposed person be blindfolded and seated in the middle of the room. Then let him try to determine the direction from which emanates the sound made by striking a coin—say a quarter or a half dol­lar—with a key or other hard object, bysome one who is eight or ten feet from him. The sub­ject of the experiment also has to guess the dis­tance at which the sound seems to have been made. Try it first with nothing between the coin and the subject, then have the person who holds the money piece vary the position of his hand in such a way as to form a screen between the silver and the subject, without, however, altering his position in the room. Almost in­variably the subject will answer incorrectly, and no doubt when his bandage is removed will be greatly surprised at the gross errors in auditory perception that he has just committed. The illusion that is produced by simply varying the position of the hand in which the coin is jingled, is a good illustration of that obtained through ventriloquism.

Have a child and a man placed in the same angle with reference to the auditor and near to­gether. If the man then speaks in the accents of a child without moving his lips or the muscles of his face in any way, the auditors will believe that the voice comes from the child. Even if the man is some distance away from the child the illusion will still be effective, if the latter accommodates its features and gestures to the words spoken by the former.

Were it not for this tendency to self-deception, there would be no such thing as ventriloquism, which the dictionary defines as being the art of making the voice appear to come from various points or distances, and not from the actual speaker. So far as it goes, the definition is a good one.

By a look or a gesture the ventriloquist leads his audience to expect a voice from a certain direction, then by speaking ventriloquially—that is, without moving his lips or jaws, with teeth closed or almost closed and lips only slightly parted, he tricks his auditors into believing that the voice heard actually proceeds from the point indicated. Of course unless his imitation of a distant voice is good; that is, unless in faintness, tone, body, etc., it seems to come from a distance, the effect will be imperfect, although it may still be decep­tive and therefore partly successful.

Ventriloquism is divided into two classes: Mimicry, or "Near"; and Natural or "Distant" Ventriloquism. There are many successful ven­triloquists who make no pretense whatever at using anything except "near" in their perform­ances. This is so when mechanical figures are used, and the wit and humor of the dialogue— together with the comical appearance of the fig­ures—are alone relied upon to hold the attention of the audience.

These puppets are so constructed that by plac­ing the hand at the back of the neck or within the hollow body and moving a lever with the thumb, the mouth will open and shut, thus making a movement very much like that of a person in speaking. Sometimes the eyes and arms are also made to move, and if the voices used are characteristic of the people represented by the figures, a very enjoyable entertainment, running from fifteen minutes or less to a half hour, can be given without resort to anything more diffi­cult than mimicry. A large variety of charac­ters can be used in a performance of this kind, such as Irish, negro, old man and old woman, little girl, etc., although of course there is a limit to the number which can be used advantageously by a single performer at one time.

As practical working ability in this branch of the art is easier to acquire than facility in natural ventriloquism, we will in the next chapter give definite instructions for becoming a successful figure worker.