Magic at Your Fingertips
by Milbourne Christopher & Hen Fetsch

All who keep posted on current magical literature are acquainted with the writings of these authors, each of whom has published several booklets and contributed frequently to the magic magazines. In Magic at Your Finger Tips they give fresh evidence of their originality, ingenuity, and industry.

This new booklet presents thirteen close-up effects, four feats in mental magic, five tricks with cards, five with handkerchiefs, and six with such dissimilar objects as ribbons, paper cups, candles, gloves, and ropes. Obviously there is plenty of variety in these thirty-three tricks, and there is quality as well. Without attempting to list all the items individually, we may indicate a few which seem to us worthy of special mention:

1. Climax Cup and Ball. A very clever routine with a tea-cup and a dollar bill that is wadded into a ball.
2. Impromptu Changing Bag. A simple but effective way to force a card, name, or number, by making use of a folded pocket - handkerchief.
3. Character Cards. An ingenious device (readily adaptable to other tricks) which enables the performer to have eight cards selected by eight different persons, sealed in separate envelopes by the spectators, and the envelopes thoroughly mixed, and then to discover each person's card.
4. Master Key. A neat variation of the "Seven Keys to Baldpate" lock trick.
5. Tear the Cards. After a chosen card and several others have been torn in quarters, dropped into a hat and well shaken up, the performer manages to pick out the quarters that make up the card that was selected.
6. Card from Pocket. An easy, bare-faced, baffling method of having a spectator pick a chosen card from "top, bottom, center" or any other part of a shuffled pack that has been placed in the performer's pocket.
7. Lightning Production. The instantaneous and startling appearance of a large silk foulard at the fingertips of each hand.
8. Burning a Borrowed Handkerchief. An explanation which places the famous Restored Handkerchief trick within reach of anyone who elects to do it.

Parenthetically, we must record a disturbing suggestion in one of the explanations - the return to a spectator of a borrowed paper dollar from which a corner has been torn for purposes of identification. Our concern is all the greater because we have recently witnessed public performances in which several tricks were concluded in this way. We sincerely hope that this sort of practice is not to become general. To us it seems scarcely fair play to return a mutilated banknote to a spectator who has been so kind as to entrust it to a magician. Perhaps the solution is for the performer (after the spectator has identified his bill by "matching" the corner) to take from his wallet a brand new dollar, give it in exchange for the mutilated bill, and thus relieve the obliging spectator of the trouble of pasting and passing the torn note. We are convinced that most audiences, and all "obliging spectators," would appreciate this act of common courtesy.

The eight tricks we have listed above are fair samples of the contents of Magic at Your Finger Tips, though there are doubtless others which will have greater interest for some performers. This useful collection of "tested tricks" runs into forty-six well-printed, illustrated pages, and is bound in soft boards. We should expect it to have an excellent sale, and to give genuine satisfaction.