From coin tricks to card tricks, black art, mindreading and even ventriloquism, this work is meant as an introduction for the budding magician and showman.
Excerpt from the introduction:
Magic naturally separates into two divisions: One, as performed by pure sleight-of-hand with ordinary objects; and the other, which depends upon apparatus or mechanical appliances; and these are called respectively Drawingroom, and Grand or Stage Magic. The former is made up of feats depending upon manual dexterity, chemical combinations, and arithmetical problems. Grand magic, likewise, consists of manual manipulation, and, in addition, mechanical appliances, and optical illusions. Cards, of course, play an important part in both branches.
- FIRST WORDS ON MAGIC
- The Magic Wand
- The Magician's Table
- The Magician's Dress
- The Vanishing Gloves
- COIN TRICKS
- Palming.
- The Pass.
- To Secretly Change a Coin.
- The Half-dollar Wand.
- The Shower of Money.
- The Tray of Proteus.
- To Make a Person Find Himself Richer than He Thought He was.
- To Fill with Coins a Tumbler which is upon the Stage, the Coins being Collected in the Audience.
- New Coin Catching.
- To Produce Coins from a Lighted Candle.
- The Animated Coin, which Answers Questions.
- To Make a Coin Pass up Your Sleeve.
- To Make a Coin Pass up the Right-arm Coatsleeve, Round the Back, Down the Left Arm, and Into the Hand.
- A Lost Coin to Drop from the Ceiling into a Tumbler.
- The Floating Coin.
- To Rub One Coin into Three.
- The Davenport Cabinet.
- The Nest of Boxes.
- The Ball of Berlin Wool.
- The Rattle Box. To Make a Coin Vanish from the Box, though Still Heard to Rattle within It.
- The Demon Handkerchief (Le Mouchoir du Diable).
- Odd or Even, or the Mysterious Addition.
- A Coin Being Spun upon the Table, to Tell Blindfold Whether It Falls Head or Tail Upwards.
- The Magic Quarter.
- The Disappearing Dime.
- CARD TRICKS
- To Make the Pass (Sauter la Coupe).
- To Force a Card.
- To "Slip" a Card.
- To "Change" a Card (Filer la Carte).
- To Spring the Cards from One Hand to the Other.
- To Throw a Card.
- New Thought Card Sleight.
- To Distinguish the Suit of Any Given Card by Weight.
- To Make All the Cards, Except a Chosen One, Fall to the Floor.
- To Catch Two Cards Thought of in the Air with the Hand.
- To Tell the Cards Thought of by Four Persons.
- Sixteen Cards being Placed upon a Table, to Guess the One Thought of.
- To Tell which Pair of Cards was Selected.
- Twenty-five Cards being Placed upon the Table, to Mention which has been Thought of.
- The Four Kings Being Separated, to Bring Them Together by a Single Cut.
- A Card having been Drawn from and Returned to the Pack, to Find it under a Handkerchief.
- To Tell Whether any Card in the Pack is Red or Black without Looking at it.
- To Name all the Cards in Succession.
- To Make Two Cards Change Places whilst Held in Separate Hands.
- To Make Two Cards Change Places at the Word of Command.
- The Triple Deal.
- The Card Found at the Second Guess.
- The Card Found Under the Hat.
- The Revolution.
- The Nailed Card.
- To Make a Card Jump Out of the Pack and Run on the Table.
- The Trick of Thirty-one.
- The Changing Ladle.
- MISCELLANEOUS TRICKS
- To Tell the Numbers on a Pair of Dice.
- To Change the Numbers on Dice.
- Houdin's Nut Trick.
- The Magic Bran Glass.
- The Oriental Ball Trick.
- The Bran Plate.
- The Vanishing Tumbler of Water.
- To Knock a Tumbler Through a Table.
- To Place Water in a Drinking-glass Upside Down.
- The Protean Liquid.
- To Bring Colored Ribbons from Your Mouth.
- An Egg Put into a Phial.
- To Keep the Hand Dry in Water.
- Sympathetic Inks.
- To Make a Ring Pass through a Table.
- To Pass a Ring through a Pocket-handkerchief.
- To Pass a Borrowed Ring into an Egg.
- To Produce a Cannon Ball from a Hat.
- To Hatch Chickens in a Hat.
- To Restore a Crushed Hat.
- To Tie a Person in a Sack, from which He Gets Out without Cutting it or Breaking the Seal which Secures the String.
- To Produce Bowls of Water and Goldfish from beneath a Cloth, and to Make them Disappear Again.
- The Tube and Ball.
- The Smashed Watch Restored.
- The Butterfly Trick.
- The Mystic Afghan Bands.
- The Inexhaustible Bottle.
- The Chinese Rings.
- The Thinkophone.
- Reading Blindfolded.
- The Spirit Handkerchief.
- The Bewitched Skull.
- The Disappearing Lady.
- The Mystery of the Floating Head.
- The Cabinet of Proteus.
- The Mystic Flight.
- BLACK ART
- HOW TO BE A SPIRIT MEDIUM
- Of Temperature.
- Of the Positions to be Observed.
- Of Impressions.
- MIND READING
- VENTRILOQUISM
- A Bee.
- A Mosquito.
- A Fly.
- Concluding Remarks
- Callahan and the Skeleton
- Callahan, the Ventriloquist
Expanded edition 1916, 150 pages; PDF 101 pages.
word count: 45880 which is equivalent to 183 standard pages of text