Sleight of Hand: A Practical Manual of Legerdemain for Amateurs & Others

A Practical Manual of Legerdemain for Amateurs & Others
EDWIN SACHS
Dover Publications, Inc. New York
Published in Canada by General Publishing Company, Ltd., 30 Lesmill Road, Don Mills, Toronto, Ontario. This Dover edition, first published in 1980, is an unabridged republication of the second, greatly enlarged, edition of the work as published by L. Upcott Gill, London, 1885. International Standard Book Number: 0-486-23911-X Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 79-54184 Manufactured in the United States of America Dover Publications, Inc. 180 Varick Street New York, N. Y. 10014
It is always a matter for self-congratulation on the part of an author to be called upon to furnish a Preface to a second or subsequent edition of some bantling of his brain. In the present instance the task is more satisfactory than usual, the author not coming before the reader empty-handed. Since the publication of the first edition, conjurors have not been idle, and numerous new methods for producing magical surprises have been invented. Such of these as are suitable or worthy—for, in their haste to be novel, many have failed to be satisfactory—the author has incorporated; and, by a thorough revision of the work, he has placed before the aspiring conjuror, written up to date, all that it is possible for him to know in the region of Sleight of Hand.
E. S.
London,
April , 1885.

SLEIGHT OF HAND
It is as pleasant to be cheated as to cheat, is a maxim that must have been framed expressly for conjuring, for the more completely one is deceived by its medium (and, be it said, by its medium alone) the better one is pleased.
The date of the origin of conjuring, as we now understand the art, is not known, but there must have been proficients in the practice of it as early as the time of Chaucer; for that ancient writer speaks of one Coll Tregetour (Tregetour signifying a juggler) producing a windmill from beneath a walnut shell. There is doubtless some slight exaggeration in this statement, or else modern wizards are far behind those of early days—an hypothesis I cannot accept. In the superstitious lands of the East, jugglery was doubtless at the bottom of the many manifestations that were mixed up with religion, and the wily priests made the best (or worst) uses of its influence on the uncultivated mind. When we consider the effect that is even now produced on the minds of an enlightened audience by a skilful manipulator, the wonderment of people who were but half civilised, and who were taught to believe in spirits, is scarcely a matter for surprise.