Transcriber's Notes
The book from which this e-text was transcribed bears the inscription "Bequest of Harry Houdini April 1927".
The Library of Congress Online Catalog lists Harper as author of this work, however WorldCat lists the book as printed by Thomas Harper for Ralph Mab. It seems that Mab was a stationer (arguably the publisher) and Harper the printer, not the author.
Irregular spelling, capitalisation and hyphenation are as per the original. Spacing around punctuation has been regularised. Unclear or missing punctuation corrected without note. Long-s in the original replaced with regular s. Illustrations have been moved to the nearest sentence break i.e. period, colon or semi-colon. Missing letters have been restored as follows:
"The Definition, or description of the Operator" [T in "The" added] Likely printers errors were noted as follows but not corrected: "should churme for butter, and" ["churme" should be "churne"?] "quantitie of linfoyl and quicksilver" and "put your linfoyl in a crucible" ["linfoyl" should be "tinfoyl"?]
"Then say thus, they swallow puddings" [p in "pudding" added]
"moment therefore be quick" [f in "therefore" added]
"and called The decollation of Iohn Baptist"