Containing a complete description of the mysteries of magic and sleight of hand, together with many wonderful experiments.
Excerpt from the introduction:
The chief requisites for success in the performance of the black art is manual dexterity and self-confidence; nimble fingers and a cool temper. Any one who exhibits feats of legerdemain, will do well to remember that one of the best methods of diverting the attention of the audience from the action of your fingers, is to keep talking; the more diverting your talk, the less attention will the audience give to your manipulation of the object which has to be moved or changed without their knowledge.
- Introduction
- The Jumping Feather
- How to Break a Stone with a Blow of the Fist
- To Melt Money in a Walnut Shell without Injuring the Shell
- How to Pull out of Your Mouth Yards of Ribbon, etc., of whatever Color you Please
- The Burning Five-Dollar Bill
- Fiery Writing in the Dark
- Writing by the Rays of the Sun
- A Loud Report, like that of a Gun, coming from a Tobacco Pipe
- To Write in the Dark
- Philosophy Puzzled
- To Make a Ring Suspend by a Burnt Thread
- The Handkerchief Cut, Torn and Mended
- The Burnt Handkerchief
- The Water Trick
- The Tumbling Egg
- To Make Blood Flow From a Knife
- The Card Nailed to the Wall by a Pistol Shot
- Arithmetical Conjuring Tricks
- To tell who has the Ring, and on which Finger
- A Person having Gold in one hand and Silver in the other, you tell in which hand is the Gold and in which the Silver
- To find out a Person’s Birthday by Arithmetic
- To Make a Card Jump out of a Pack and Run along the Table
- How to Change Four Aces into Four Knaves
- Cards Mysteriously Changed
- Tricks with Money
- How to Steal Three Ducks
- How to Show the Hen and Egg Bag, and from an Empty Bag to bring a Hundred Eggs and afterwards a Live Hen
- The Dancing Egg
- To Make an Egg stand on End on a Looking-glass
- The Beer Trick
- To pass a Tumbler through a Table
- How to eat Fire and blow it up in your Mouth with a Pair of Bellows
- To make a Live Fish jump off a Plate
- The Learned Swan, or Goose
- A Capital Trick with a Watch
- The Decapitation Trick
- New Shick Shake Puzzle
- Tricks in Prestidigitation
- A Scotch Money Box
- The Sand Frame Trick
- A Brioche Baked in a Hat
- So Simple
- An Ingenious Ring Trick
- Disappearance of a Coin
- Thought Reading
- Experiments in Black Art by Chemistry
- To Obtain Fire from Water
- To Give a Party a Ghastly Appearance
- The Fire and Wine Bottle
- The Fiery Flash
- To Boil a Liquid Without Fire
- To Procure Hydrogen Gas
- To Copy Writing with a Flat-iron
- To make Fringe appear about the Flame of a Candle
- To Produce Instantaneous Light upon Ice
- To make Paper Fireproof
- To Melt Lead in Paper
- To Melt Steel as easily as Lead
- A Light that Burns for a Year
- Flame Extinguished by Gas
- The Tobacco-Pipe Cannon
- Prince Rupert’s Detonating Glass Bombs
- To Wash the Hands in Molten Lead
- To Make an Artificial Earthquake and Volcano
- To Produce Fire from Cane
- To Soften Iron or Steel
- To Fill with Smoke Two Apparently Empty Bottles
- To Make Luminous Writing in the Dark
- To Make Red Fire
- To Make Green Fire
- To Make Wine or Brandy Float on Water
- To Make Beautiful Transparent Colored Water
- Colored Flames
- Orange Colored Flame
- Emerald Green Flame
- Instantaneous Flame
- Two Liquids Make a Solid
- Two Solids Make a Liquid
- A Solid Opaque Mass Makes a Transparent Liquid
- Two Cold Liquids Make a Hot One
- To Make Ice
- Curious Change of Colors
- The Metallic Colors
- Invisible Inks
- Invisible Yellow Ink
- Invisible Red Ink
- Invisible Violet Ink
- Invisible Green Ink
- How to Rub Out Twenty Chalks
- To Pour Cold Water Into a Kettle
- The Cannon Ball Trick
- To Change the Color of a Bird or Flower
1st edition 1902, 62 pages; PDF 48 pages.
word count: 19357 which is equivalent to 77 standard pages of text
