He received several gold medals from the French Government for the successful application of electricity to the running of clocks. The conjurer’s house was a regular Magic Villa, being full of surprises for the friends who visited the place. There were sliding panels in the walls, trap doors, automatons in every niche, descending floors, and electric wires from attic to cellar. Houdin died at St. Gervais in June, 1871. His son-in-law, M. Hamilton, continued to carry on the Temple of Enchantment at Paris, and at the present time there is a little theater on the Boulevard des Italiens called “Théâtre Robert-Houdin,” where strolling conjurers hold forth. It was a great disappointment to Houdin when his two sons refused to take up magic as a profession; one entered the French army, and the other became a watchmaker.

V.

One of the best sleight-of-hand artists that ever lived was Carl Herrmann, who styled himself the “Premier Prestidigitateur of France and First Professor of Magic in the World.” He died at Carlsbad, June 8, 1887, at the advanced age of seventy-two. Of him Burlingame says: “Without using much mechanical or optical apparatus, he produced many wonderful effects by a sharp observation of the absence of mind of the human auditor, assisted by a hand as firm as steel and capable of the most deft movement.” Carl Herrmann traveled extensively, and many conjurers adopted his name as a nom de théâtre. Magicians seem to have a penchant for this sort of thing, as witness the case of Signor Blitz. Antonio Blitz, a very clever performer, no sooner arrived in the United States than imitators sprang up like mushrooms in a single night. In his “Fifty Years in the Magic Circle,” he gives a list of eleven of these impostors, who not only had the impudence to assume his name, but circulated verbatim copies of his handbills and advertisements—

A clever entertainer was Robert Heller. He was a magician, a mimic, and a musician—a combination of talents rarely seen in one individual. He was, indeed, the Admirable Crichton of fantaisistes. As a pure sleight-of-hand artist, Heller was not the equal of some of his contemporaries, but he made up for all deficiencies in this respect by his histrionic abilities. By the power of his address and wit he invested the most insignificant feats of legerdemain with a peculiar charm. In this regard he was like Robert-Houdin. Robert Heller, or Palmer, was born in London, in the year 1833. Early in life he manifested a unique talent for music, and won a scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music at the age of fourteen. Having witnessed several performances of the conjurer Houdin, in London, he became enamored of magic, and devoted his time to perfecting himself in the art of legerdemain, subsequently traveling around giving entertainments in the English provinces. In the year 1852 he made his bow to a New York audience at the Chinese Assembly Rooms, on which occasion he wore a black wig and spoke with a decided Gallic accent, having come to the conclusion that a French prestidigitateur would be better received in the United States than an English wizard. I have this on the authority of Henry Hatton, the conjurer, who wrote an article on Heller’s “second-sight” trick for the “Century Magazine” some years ago. Hatton also says that Heller began his magical soirée with an address in the French language. Not meeting with the desired financial success, Heller abandoned conjuring, and settled in Washington, D. C., as a teacher of the piano and organist of one of the large churches of the city. Eventually he married one of his music pupils, a Miss Kieckhoffer, the daughter of a wealthy German banker, and abandoned music for magic. He went to New York, where he opened Heller’s Hall, in a building which then stood opposite Niblo’s Garden, on Broadway. His second début as a conjurer was an artistic and financial success. After a splendid run in New York he returned to London, opening what is now Pool’s Theater. Subsequently he visited Australia, India, and California, returning to New York in 1875. He died November 28, 1878, at the Continental Hotel, Philadelphia, at the height of his fame. Like most of his confrères, Heller was a clever advertiser. His theatrical posters usually bore the following amusing verse:

“Shakespeare wrote well,
Dickens wrote Weller;
Anderson was ——,
But the greatest is Heller.”

His entertainments consisted of magic, music, and an exhibition of pretended clairvoyance. Those who were not interested in his feats of legerdemain flocked to hear his superb performances on the piano.

Heller, like Houdin, made great use of electricity in his magical séances. Many of his electrical tricks were of his own invention. In his will he directed his executors to destroy all of his apparatus, so that it might not come into the possession of any other conjurer.