Published 1800-1899 in Magic & Mentalism: page 3

For the first time explains and demonstrates the great secret of her marvelous power.

In this autobiography, Lulu Hurst tells her rise to fame and fortune by performing acts of incredible strength on stage. She does this with personal recollections as well as quoting from various newspaper reports. At the time she performed many attributed her strength to some as of yet unknown or unexplainable force. But she had no unusual strength or the aid of any special force. She cleverly used mechanical principles as well as showmanship to make it appear she had super-human strength. In the second...

Life and adventure on the prairies, mountains, and Pacific coast.

Beyond the Mississippi is a travel log of Albert Richardson from a few years before and after the American Civil War. As the title suggests, he traveled west of the Mississippi through states and territories such as Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, Texas, New Mexico, Montana, Wyoming, Iowa, Oregon, California, Nevada, etc. He describes nature, people, politics, and commerce. It includes exciting adventures as well as fairly dry facts such as how many bushels of grain a particular area produces. Overall it is quite readable and the...

Barton-Wright, one of the first Europeans to study Japanese martial arts, explains eleven pseudo-strength tricks in words and photos. Forty years before this publication Lulu Hurst created a sensation demonstrating similar stunts as manifestations of 'unexplainable forces'.

The tricks explained in this article are:

1. How to Master a Man with Two Fingers
2. How to Hold a Chair in the Palms of your Hands, and to Defy Anyone to Pull it through your Hands
3. How to Lift from the Ground a Chair in which a Person is Seated
4. How to Lift a Chair with Four Men Packed upon it
5. How to Defy Anyone Standing in Front...

A nicely illustrated article explaining some of the popular pseudo-strength demonstrations made popular for example by Lulu Hurst and others.

200 years ago demonstrations of this kind created a sensation. Nobody could explain them. Many believed these were manifestations of some yet unexplained force. Today they are relegated to party stunts. Nevertheless, some are quite surprising demonstrations you can try out in your living room.

1st edition 1928, PDF 6 pages.

Being an explanation of the game, and a warning against its dangers.

Excerpt from the preface:

A translation of Les Trickeries des Grecs by M. Robert-Houdin, one of the most valuable and interesting works on the subject of card sharping.

Excerpt from the preface:

Instructions for games, magic tricks, model building, giving shows, and more.

• Games Of Skill
  • Draughts
    • Laws Of The Game
    • Games For Practice
    • Concluding Observations
  • Dominoes
  • Chess
    • The Chess-Board And Chessmen
    • Value And Moves Of The Pieces
    • Laws Of Chess
    • Technical Terms Used In Chess
    • Opening The Game
    • Games For Practice
    • General Observations
    • Conclusion
  • Morrice
  • Fox And Geese
• Conjuring
  • Legerdemain And Simple Deceptions
  • To Lift A Bottle With A Straw
  • The Tobacco Pipe Jug Stand
  • To Break A Stick Placed On Two Glasses
  • The Bottle Conjuror
  • The Mysterious Wafers
  • Advantageous...

A dissuasive to the young against games of chance.

• DIALOGUE I. On Playing Pins.
• DIALOGUE II. On Playing Marbles.
• DIALOGUE III. On Pitching Coppers.
• DIALOGUE IV. On Matching And Tossing Coppers, Throwing Heads And Tails, &c.
• DIALOGUE V. On Sabbath Breaking - Telling Lies - Disobedience To Parents, &c.
• DIALOGUE VI. On The Use Of Tobacco.
• DIALOGUE VII. On Playing Various Games.
• DIALOGUE VIII. On Gamblers, Lotteries, &c.
• Death Of A Boy On A Race Course.
• Social Card-Parties.
• The Gambler's Victim.
• The Ruined Family; Or, A Warning To Those Who Play For Amusement.
• The Charm Of Gambling. ...

Judge's Library was a satirical periodical published in the USA from 1881 to 1947. It was a rival magazine to Puck founded among others by cartoonist James Albert Wales, dime novels publisher Frank Tousey and author George H. Jessop.

This issue No. 79 of Judge is all about poker. It provides a wonderful glimpse into how ubiquitous poker was in the US that such a successful periodical would dedicate an entire issue to it.

Also noteworthy, particularly for Erdnase scholars, is the fact that pretty much all the funny dialogs in this issue are in various national slang and ebonic. Thus the few lines...

A humoristic manual about swindling, how to become a successful swindler, as well as why it is such a good thing - featuring the late captain Barabbas Whitefeather.

• Preface Of The Editor
• Chapter I. The Reader Is Introduced To Captain Whitefeather's Relations.
• Chapter II. Captain Whitefeather Takes An Enlarged View Of Swindling - Social Evils And Their Remedy.
• Chapter III. Of The Face Necessary To A Swindler - (An Incidental Speculation On The "Division Of Property") - And Of The Use And Abuse Of Mustachios.
• Chapter IV. Of The Parentage And Name Of A Swindler - Of His Equipage - Of His...

Containing over one hundred highly amusing and instructive tricks with chemicals.

• Chemical Affinity
• Sympathetic Inks
• Alum Baskets
• Easy Crystallizations
• To Make a piece of Charcoal appear as though it were Coated with Gold
• To Give a Piece of Charcoal a Rich Coat of Silver
• Combustion
• Chemistry of The Air
• Amateur Air Pump
• Asphyxia
• Balloon in Vacuum
• Boiling Cold Water
• A Sucking Tube
• Cupping
• The Barometer
• A Novel Barometer
• Compressed Air
• Noiseless Bell
• The Bursting Bladder
• Weight of the Air
• Spoons which will Melt in Hot Water
• Effect of Compression
• To Cover Iron with Copper ...

A collection of simple and effective experiments illustrating chemical, physical, and optical wonders.

Published by the Offices of the Chemist and Druggist. 42 Cannon Street, London.

• ANCIENT AND MODERN CHEMISTRY
  • 'The Four Elements'
  • Collecting Gases
• EXPERIMENTS WITH THE GASES
  • Oxygen
  • Nitrogen
  • Hydrogen
  • Experiments With Hydrogen
  • Composition Of Water
  • Making Gas From A Bottle
  • A Model Gas Manufactory
  • Inextinguishable Flame
  • Gas Balloons
  • Musical Flame
  • Musical Tubes
  • Carbonic Acid Gas
  • Carbonic Acid Gas From The Lungs
  • Combustion And Respiration
  • Decantation Of Gases
  • Weighing...

Containing over fifty of the latest and best tricks used by magicians. Also containing the secret of Second Sight.

Excerpt from the introduction:

At one point it was believed that only one copy of this book existed. This and other myths are addressed in the introduction by Frank Lehmann, who has studied this book in detail.

The book exposes various ways in which the game of Faro was crooked. It was a very popular betting game in the United States and usually was rigged in one way or another. It was published by Richard K. Fox, the proprietor of the Police Gazette.

• Introduction
• Part I
  1. The Game Of Faro
  2. The Cards In Faro
  3. Dealing The Cards
  4. Keeping The Game
  5. Technical Terms Used In Faro
  6. Laws Of The Game
  7. The Chances Of The...

• CONJURING TRICKS
  • The Certain Guesser
  • The Disappearing coin
  • Money Makes Money
  • A Good Variation
  • The Magic Coin Box
  • Catching the Falling Pile
  • The Flexible Watch
  • Coin and Bottle Trick
  • Needle Dart
  • The Magic Double Ring
  • The Magic Ribbon
  • The Burnt Handkerchief
  • The Vanishing Ball
  • The Wand and Ring Trick
  • Swallowing the Knife
  • The Vanishing Coin
• EASY CARD TRICKS
  • Telling a Selected Card
  • A Wonderful Discovery
  • The Twenty-one Card Trick
  • Naming all the Cards in the Pack
  • Forcing the Choice
  • The Chosen Card
  • Divination
  • Further Divination
  • The Seven Heap
  • Spelling the Cards
  • Changing...

For magicians most interesting is a section with arithmetic tricks and another with legerdemain featuring effects such as letting a pen-knife jump out of a goblet, some card tricks, coin tricks, and chemical tricks.

• Of Astrological Influence
• Lives Of The Most Eminent Magicians, Astrologers, Conjurers, &c.
• On The Interpretation Of Dreams
• Apparitions, Witchcraft, &c.
• Philolosphical And Ingenious Amusements
  • A person having fixed on a number in his mind, to tell him what number it is
  • Another method of discovering a number thought on
  • A quantity of eggs being broken, to find how many there...

Being a record of his experience as a white slave; a soldier in the Union Army; a professional gambler; a patron of the turf; a variety theater and minstrel manager; and, finally, a convert to the Murphy Cause, and to the Gospel of Christ.

This book is an illustration of this paragraph by S.W. Erdnase:

This is a wonderful account of a traveling showman's trials and tribulations in England and Scotland during the middle of the 19th century. Among other things, he was a conjurer. While this is not a book of tricks, one coin trick is explained as part of one story of his life. But much more interesting are the descriptions of various scams and the modus operandi of various ways to defraud the public by traveling hucksters the author encountered. The operation of the thimble rig is explained in detail. It is an account of how traveling showmen struggled essentially their entire life to make...

For anybody interested in Erdnase, this poker story compilation should be of interest because many poker stories are from Chicago. It was published in 1887 which means it likely overlaps somewhat with the active time of Erdnase. We are not saying you will find a story featuring Erdnase. But such poker stories, even if they are often exaggerated or purely fictional, do provide one with some sense of the times of Erdnase.

In particular, it is educational to compare the stories with the ones from Eugene Edwards' Jack Pots. There isn't any significant overlap, however one aspect is noticeably different. Eugene...

A fairly detailed work on the rules and variations of draw poker. Also includes some advice on how to play the game successfully. This work includes Robert C. Schenck's rules for draw poker.

• PREFACE
• CHAPTER I
  • Introduction
  • The Element of Chance
  • The Question of Stakes
• CHAPTER II
  • Technical Terms
• CHAPTER III
  • The Order of Hands
  • The Straight
  • The Blaze
• CHAPTER IV
  • Rules of Draw Poker
  • The Limit
  • The Ante
  • The Straddle
  • The Deal
  • Betting Before the Draw
  • Discard and Draw
  • Betting After the Draw
• CHAPTER V
  • Jack Pots
  • Incidental Jack Pots
  • The "Buck"
  • Progressive Jack Pots
• CHAPTER VI
  • Freeze Out
• CHAPTER...

While Robert Schenck served as ambassador in the UK, he was persuaded to write down his rules for poker by a duchess. This was the first publication to deal solely with draw poker.

1st edition 1880, PDF 6 pages.

Full exposition of all the various arts, mysteries, and miseries of gambling.

It is a complete exposure, of the different and various ways of deception and cheating in all the numerous games played, such as Faro, Two, Three, and Four-Handed Poker, Shuffling Cards, Roulette and Rolling Faro, Vingt-Un, Brag, Euchre, Game of Boston, All Fours, Cribbage, Whist, Dice, Stealing out Cards, Palming, Playing by Signs, Marking Cards, Backgammon, Solitaire, Playing Three against One, Spring Tables, Spring Boxes, Pulleys, Ingenuity of Gamblers, Card Manufactories, Lotteries, then modes of drawing and...

You will find here card tricks, cheating exposes, card games, and gambling stories.

A later expanded version of this book was published under the title Gamblers' Tricks With Cards Exposed and Explained.

• Chapter I
  • Invention Of Cards
  • Mysterious Trick Of Thirty Six Cards; Telling The Card You Look At Without Seeing The Pack.
  • To Tell A Card Thought Of
  • Three Jacks As Thieves, Caught By A King As A Policeman
  • To Burn A Card And Fin'd It In A Watch
  • How To Shift Cards
  • The Four Associates
  • To Make A Card Jump Out Of The Pack
  • How To Change Cards To Pictures
• Chapter II
  • All Fours
  • Deceptions Used In The Game Of All Fours
  • How To...

This work reveals a mix of card tricks and other small magic effects, science tricks, and in particular chemical stunts and experiments. It also covers the making of fireworks in some depth including how to make an artificial volcano.

Interesting was that even in 1850 it was clear that experimenting with mercury (quicksilver) was risky as the following quote from the book shows:

(Obviously, nobody should be casually experimenting with mercury. It is...