| Citation |
BNL.767.053
25 Jun 1767:21 (3325 Supplement)
Extract of a letter from Bath, Feb. 1
You have undoubtedly heard of our musical debates in this
place, which are now all at an end, and harmony well
established in an agreeable performance of gentlemen and
ladies on various instruments--You may boast of your Jonas
in London, but we have at this place a gentleman from
Devonshire, who performs a feat very surprising, without any
slight of hand. This person gives the company four or five
cards, on each of which is marked a musical chord, called
the sympathetic chord. You are to observe, that each card
has a very different chord wrote on it from any of the rest.
He then bids them take them to the other end of the room,
and change them in whatever manner they please: he goes
himself to the harpsichord, and desires any one of the
company to touch one of those cards, and he immediately
places his hands on the very notes wrote on the card,
without knowing which is touched: this he does to every
card that is pitched upon, and desires any master of music
to prove that he touches the right notes, to satisfy the
company. There can be no fraud in this feat, because he
leaves the company to fix on the card, and if they chuse a
second; he changes his hands to the different notes wrote on
that card. The masters here confess that the thing is done,
but cannot find out by what means. Some say there is
magnetical influence, but this is not clear. This gentleman
does not himself know one note of music, yet he bets any
wager that he changes his hands as they touch the different
cards, and indeed seldom, of ever, fails--Acquaint the
curious with this ingenious discovery, which is founded on
the mathematicks.
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