The Magician's Own Book, or, the Whole Art of Conjuring / Being a complete hand-book of parlor magic, and containing over one thousand optical, chemical, mechanical, magnetical, and magical experiments, amusing transmutations, astonishing sleights and subtleties, celebrated card deceptions, ingenious tricks with numbers, curious and entertaining puzzles, together with all the most noted tricks of modern performers.

by George Arnold; Frank Cahill

HINTS TO AMATEURS.

The following hints are of considerable importance to the amateur exhibitor.

1. Never acquaint the company beforehand with the particulars of the feat you are about to perform, as it will give them time to discover your mode of operation.

2. Endeavor, as much as possible, to acquire various methods of performing the same feat, in order that if you should be likely to fail in one, or have reason to believe that your operations are suspected, you may be prepared with another.

3. Never yield to the request of any one to repeat the same feat, as you thereby hazard the detection of your mode of operation; but do not absolutely refuse, as that would appear ungracious. Promise to perform it in a different way, and then exhibit another which somewhat resembles it. This maneuver seldom fails to answer the purpose.

4. Never venture on a feat requiring manual dexterity, till you have previously practiced it so often, as to acquire the necessary expertness.

5. As diverting the attention of the company from too closely inspecting your maneuvers is a most important object, you should manage to talk to them during the whole course of your proceedings. It is the plan of vulgar operators to gabble unintelligible jargon, and attribute their feats to some extraordinary and mysterious influence. There are few persons at the present day credulous enough to believe such trash, even among the rustic and most ignorant; but, as the youth of maturer years might inadvertently be tempted to pursue this method, while exhibiting his skill before his younger companions, it may not be deemed superfluous to caution him against such a procedure. He may state, and truly, that everything he exhibits can be accounted for on rational principles, and is only in obedience to the unerring laws of Nature; and although we have just cautioned him against enabling the company themselves to detect his operations, there can be no objection (particularly when the party comprises many younger than himself) to occasionally show by what simple means the most apparently marvelous feats are accomplished.

CURE FOR TROUBLESOME SPECTATORS.

It will sometimes happen at an early stage of the performance, that the ultimate success of the whole is likely to be endangered by a troublesome person, (generally a naughty boy,) who will persist in crying out, "I know how it is done!"—at the same time continually advancing to the table, from which it is, of course, the business of the conjurer to keep his youthful admirers. Should this be the case, the magic whistles may be produced, and the remark made, that now the troublesome boy shall show the company a trick. Having taken up one of the whistles, which has previously been filled with flour or magnesia, dust or soot, proceed to give a few directions, particularly impressing on him the necessity of blowing hard, because the whistle you place in his hand is perforated with a number of holes. The would-be magician is, therefore, excessively mortified, on applying his mouth and blowing hard, to receive the powder in his face. Any turner will make such a whistle, it being nothing more than the usual shaped toy perforated at the top with a number of holes.

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