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Perhaps the most effective of all of the tricks is the one illustrated in Fig. 3. The whole secret in this consists in insisting upon the men holding the stick in a vertical position. When the girl's open hand is first placed against the lower portion of the stick, she moves it two or three times up and down, pulling gradually more and more against it. As this tends to pull the stick away from the vertical she insists that the men keep it straight. Thus cautioned, they will exert more and more effort until, when she feels that the pressure against her hand is sufficient, she instructs them to push down with all their might. They do so and imagine that they are exerting a tremendous vertical thrust, whereas their vertical effort is actually very slight-- insufficient even to overcome the friction of the stick against her moist hand. The men are, really, exerting a tremendous effort, but are deceived as to its direction. With their hands tightly grasping the upper end of the stick, they are really trying to force the other end of the stick against the palm of her hand.

In order to show just how far this was true, I weighed myself accurately on the scales and, while still on the platform, essayed the role of the electric girl, and while two powerful men were exerting every muscle to push the stick past my open palm, I had myself weighed again: The increase of weight would, of course, be the measure of their united vertical thrust.

In one case this increase was twenty-five pounds, and in another, twenty-four pounds. This, of course, as insignificant, and since my arm would naturally take the direction of the resultant of the horizontal and vertical efforts of the men, the strain upon me was merely a tensional one in the direction of my arm. In the lifting experiments in which Mrs. Abbot apparently makes herself so heavy that no one can lift her, she succeeds simply by holding the lifter at such a distance from herself, by means of her extended arm, that he must apply his strength under very great disadvantage. It will require a man of more than average strength to lift, under these conditions, so slight a weight as fifty or sixty pounds and, therefore, a woman weighing 103 pounds, which is said to be Mrs. Abbott's weight at the present time, can safely defy even so strong a man as Sandow.

In the experiment with the child, a slightly different procedure is necessary, for a powerful man would be able to lift the child where he would utterly fail with a person twice its weight. In the case of the child, the hold of the lifter will be much lower than in experiments with an adult, and he must lean over further for the purpose. He is, of course, kept at the proper distance from the child, even though leaning over, by the performer's hand on his shoulder. In this position his lifting effort will not be in a vertical direction as he imagines, but in the arc of a circle whose tangent will be but a few degrees from the horizontal. He is, therefore, unconsciously working at great mechanical disadvantage in endeavoring to force the child's weight nearly horizontal, and all that the performer has to do is to counteract this horizontal push, or rather the resultant of the vertical and horizontal efforts of the lifter, by the gentle pressure of the other hand which, as before described, rests between the shoulder blades of the child upon whom the lifting experiment is being tried. One need only try either of these experiments according to directions to become perfectly convinced of the adequacy of the explanations.

In the experiment where the stick is merely held by the pressure of the thumbs as it rests on the open palms, the weakness of the performer is her essential element of strength, for her arms will follow every effort made to take it from her and he cannot, for this reason, exert much force against her. If he be in earnest, however, as he usually is when facing an audience, he will exhaust himself fruitlessly in exertions in one direction with one hand while he opposes these efforts by equal exertions in the opposite direction with his other hand. In fact this last trick is exactly the converse of the two first described. In those it was shown that success depended entirely upon the earnestness with which those assisting the performer opposed her motions and that, if they became passive, her efforts would not avail. In this case the performer herself becomes passive, and the efforts of her opponent become, therefore, futile and useless.

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