THE ROPE TRICK
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Some thirty odd years ago I was serving at Johannesburg on the Railway Committee of the Intercolonial Council. The Secretary to the Commissioner of Railways and I more than once had witnessed together the Indian Rope Trick per- formed in the street known as Between the Chains, off the old Market Place. One day my friend brought his camera and took several photographs of the proceedings, including the rope trick. In the result neither the rope nor the boy were visible on the films though the surroundings with the uPturned faces of the crowd were faithfully portrayed. The guara tree trick was on the other hand sufficiently reproduced. The light was excellent ; the rope was a roughly twist( d grass affair of a thickness rather greater than that of an ordinary clothes line, and the boy appeared to climb up some 12 feet before he vanished.
So far as I remember, neither of us thought more of our experience than that extraordinary. things of this sort might ordinarily be expected to come from the East, the cradle of older and possibly wiser civilizations than ours. And our explanation of the Rope Trick was just mass hypnotism of a subtle yet powerful kind. The guar tree trick may be merely sleight-of-hand, but most cleverly done.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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