Twenty-one original and impressive card effects plus eleven new, practical, useful, simple sleights by these two masters of the art of card magic.
This latest number in the Hugard and Braue Miracle Methods series might well have been called Tricks and Sleights with Cards, for it deals wholly with this most popular branch of magic. It is uniform in format with the first three volumes of Miracle Methods, and is bound in soft boards. It is a booklet of 32 pages, six of which are used to explain eleven card sleights and the remainder to teach twenty tricks with cards. There are twenty line drawings by Donna Allen, whose exceptionally fine illustrations added greatly to the attractiveness of Hugard and Braue's Expert Card Technique.
We may note specifically a few of the tricks presented in the booklet now before us. Two Way Traffic and Chosen Card to Pocket at Any Number are pleasing variations of the ever-green Cards Up the Sleeve. Jean Hugard's Cops and Crooks, Mr. and Mrs. Hart, and A Palace Revolt are effective feats of the "story" type, with the necessary patter for the first of these tricks and adequate patter hints for the second and third. Jean Hugard's Thought for Five and Fred Braue's Incredo Thought show what can be done by two magicians with imagination when, working independently, they undertake to produce a feat that will "appear to be as nearly genuine thought-reading as possible." The results attained are very good, indeed. An unusually deceptive method for doing The Card Through the Handkerchief, which was once such a popular trick that it was greatly overworked, should bring this old favorite back once more into good and regular standing.
A Reverse and a Recovery, The Miracle Divination (by Eugenia Braue who, though described as a "non-magician," has worked out a very magical effect), The Silent Speller, True or False?, Opened by the Censor, My Name's Magic, A Safe Bet, and The Fantastic Fan are titles which suggest vaguely the nature of other tricks explained in this little book. The section given to the explanation of sleights includes useful information about "culls," "changes," "false cuts," "shuffles," and "palming."
We feel sure that the Hugard and Braue "fans," who are numbered by the thousands, will hail this latest pamphlet with enthusiasm, and we should not be surprised if Miracle Methods No.4 won the authors many new friends. It is an exceptionally big dollar's worth of up-to-date card magic.
