No skill, no sleights, no manipulation is required to perform the following effects. Many are impromptu, making use of anyone's cards, and needing no preparation or make-ready. Others admittedly depend upon such chicanery as cards with double faces and blank faces, double backs and blank backs, roughing fluid and other aides, all available from magic shops. Many skilled manipulators have not hesitated to use such artifices, so the reader should not scorn them.
Aside from whatever merit these tricks may possess, it is believed their greatest value lies in the stimulation they may give the reader, inspiring him to devise effects for himself. This assortment shows the imaginative magician what can be done by combining certain principles with ingenious subterfuges.
