A collection of feats of conjuring with cards, employing artificed cards and simple accessories. Embracing over 30 brilliant feats of card conjuring made possible by the use of prepared cards and simple accessories together with a complete exposition of Jean Hugard's superbly routined presentation of the famed card classic, The Aerial Cards.
This latest addition to the Hugard and Braue Miracle Methods series is a 32-page booklet, bound in soft boards and similar in format to these authors' No.1 ("Stripper Deck") and No.2 ("Shuffles"). It contains 32 tricks, nine of which depend upon double-face or double-back cards, several upon blank-face cards, others upon the introduction of extra cards into the pack, four upon the use of either miniature or giant cards, and the rest upon a pinch of salt, a pellet of wax, or some other, inexpensive "accessory."
The tricks vary greatly in their effects and their probable effectiveness - we say "probable" because there are many things here that we have never seen presented. However, we can assure the student of card magic that he will find plenty of practical items in Miracle Methods No.3. Among the best are Allen Lambie's Double Prediction; Henry Christ's The Perfect Card Location; A Fantastic Spell, an exceptionally good card-spelling effect; The Magic Imprint (reminiscent of a feat described in Hoffmann's fine book, Card Tricks with Apparatus) now out of print), a trick in which the spots from a selected card are transferred to an examined handkerchief, and the smoke from a cigarette passes into a covered glass; Arthur Pannar's Prevision Proved; R. S. Glover's Crossed Colors; The Card Target; The Magic Needle; and The Card in the Paper Cone.
Of course, Jean Hugard's version of The Thurston Rising Cards is the Piece de resistance of the book. Since we ourselves have been presenting this trick regularly for more than thirty years, though not by Hugard's method, we can corroborate his assertion that it "has a flavor of real magic about it possessed by few other card tricks." To Mr. Hugard's clean-cut and practical explanation we would add only the warning that neither this trick, nor any other that employs a thread "out in the open," should be presented unless the performer has had an opportunity to test the lights and background, and make sure that the thread is really invisible. We recall with sadness an occasion on which Howard Thurston's cross-thread was plainly visible not only to this reviewer but to others sitting in the front row of the first balcony. A word to the wise.
We must note the fact that most of the tricks here described require some ability in sleight-of-hand. To present all of them, the performer must be able to force, palm, false shuffle, side-steal, and make the pass. But some of them depend upon only one of these sleights, and several of the best demand no sleight-of-hand at, all. We hope that Hugard and Braue, having given us three excellent Miracle Methods volumes in 1942, will do equally well by us in 1943.
