I couldn't find out much about the author, but it appears that he worked professionally in telephony, thus perhaps also his contribution of a telephone trick in Magic is Fun issue 2. He was the second earliest discoverer of the only magic hexagon in 1895, which he patented in 1896, and was long thought to be the first until new records showed that the German Ernst von Haselberg discovered it in 1887.
Excerpt from the introduction:
Most people like to hear about the mysterious, the weird, the supernatural, but they would rather see these things for themselves than be told about them. That is why the magician is a better entertainer than the story-teller. If he succeeds in mystifying his fellows by showing them mysterious things they have never seen before - weird things they cannot explain - he wins for himself a certain prestige and respect which probably he could not have secured in any other way.
- INTRODUCTION
- TRICK NO. 1 The Dime Skidoo
- TRICK NO. 2 A Magic Square
- TRICK NO. 3 A Life-Inspiring Match
- TRICK NO. 4 Converting Ink into Water and Fishes
- TRICK NO. 5 The Mesmerized Card
- TRICK NO. 6 A Hypnotized Croquet Ball
- TRICK NO. 7 Changing a Handkerchief into an American Flag
- TRICK NO. 8 The Enchanted Toothpick
- TRICK NO. 9 A Handkerchief Houchee-Couchee
- TRICK NO. 10 Flying Cards
- TRICK NO. 11 The Animated Pendulum
- TRICK NO. 12 Dissolving a Silver Dollar in a Glass of Water
- TRICK NO. 13 Spirit Slate Writing
- TRICK NO. 14 Forcing a Coin Through a Table
- TRICK NO. 15 A Mysterious Card-Shooting Trick
- TRICK NO. 16 The Foolscap Mystery
- TRICK NO. 17 A Succession of Surprises
- TRICK NO. 18 Passing a Coin Through a Set of Closed Boxes
- TRICK NO. 19 Eggstraordinary Eggstraction of Inegghaustible Eggs
- TRICK NO. 20 Finding a Chosen Card by Intuition
- TRICK NO. 21 The Magic Fruit Box
- TRICK NO. 22 Forcing a Coin Through the Body
- TRICK NO. 23 The Mysterious Oriental Paddle
- TRICK NO. 24 A Greenback Printing Press
- TRICK NO. 25 A Bewildering Disappearance and Reappearance of Selected Cards
- TRICK NO. 26 "Spiritualistic" Knots
- TRICK NO. 27 A Hindoo Hoodoo Rod Trick
- TRICK NO. 28 The Hocus-Pocus Box
- TRICK NO. 29 The Mystic Tube
- TRICK NO. 30 Chosen Card Mysteriously Framed
- TRICK NO. 31 The Vanishing Coin
- TRICK NO. 32 Chinese Wonder Rings
- TRICK NO. 33 The Mesmerized Stand
- TRICK NO. 34 An Astonishing Mid-Air Marvel
- TRICK NO. 35 Pressing a Card Through a Pack
- TRICK NO. 36 A Domino Stunt in Telepathy
- TRICK NO. 37 Some Magical Dyeing
- TRICK NO. 38 A Magnetized Cane
- TRICK NO. 39 The Traveling Die
- TRICK NO. 40 Drawing Cards by Will Power
- TRICK NO. 41 The Enchanted Cabinet
- TRICK NO. 42 Mind Reading Extraordinary
- TRICK NO. 43 The Flight of Time
- TRICK NO. 44 A Bird Enigma
- TRICK NO. 45 The Conjurer's Pack
- TRICK NO. 46 A Plant That Grows in Two Minutes
- TRICK NO. 47 Egg Magic
- TRICK NO. 48 Some Witchcraft
- TRICK NO. 49 The Wizard's Beverage
- TRICK NO. 50 A Phantom Card Frame
1st edition 1910, 1924, 149 pages; PDF 104 pages.
word count: 28480 which is equivalent to 113 standard pages of text
