This event decided him; he abandoned cooking for conjuring; ménu cards for the making of programmes.
His entertainment is quite original. The curtain rises on a gloomy cavern. In the middle is a boiling caldron, fed by witches à la Macbeth. An aged necromancer, dressed in a long robe with a pointed cap on his head, enters. He begins his incantations, whereupon hosts of demons appear, who dance about the caldron. Suddenly amid the crash of thunder and a blinding flash of light, the wizard’s cave is metamorphosed into a twentieth century drawing-room, fitted up for a {273} conjuring séance. The decrepit sorcerer is changed into a gentleman in evening dress—Mr. Fox—who begins his up-to-date entertainment of modern magic. Is not this cleverly conceived?
II.
A few thumbnail sketches of some of the local magicians of New York City will not come amiss. First, there is Elmer P. Ransom, familiarly known as “Pop.” He was born in old New York, not far from Boss Tweed’s house. He still lives in that quaint part of the city. He knows New York like a book. Once he guided me through the Jewish ghetto, the Italian and Chinese quarters. It was a rare treat. Ransom is a good all around magician, who believes in the old school of apparatus combined with sleight of hand. And so do I.
Next we have Adrian Plate, who was born in Utrecht, Holland, in 1844. His rooms in upper New York are the Mecca of all visiting magicians. He has a fine collection of books on magic, and a scrap-book par excellence. Thanks to this clever conjurer, I have secured translations of rare and curious Dutch works on necromancy. Plate has always something new up his sleeve.
T. Francis Fritz (Frank Ducrot) edits Mahatma, a magazine for magicians, and is a good conjurer.
Sargent, the “Merry Wizard,” and second president of the S. A. M., is an adept in the psychology of deception and a recognized authority on the subject of patter. His articles on magic, published in Mahatma, are very interesting. He wields a facile pen as well as a wand, and like Silas Wegg occasionally drops into poetry. His poetical effusion, “In Martinka’s Little Back Shop,” brought out some years ago in Mahatma, has been widely copied.
Henry V. A. Parsell, for a number of years the archivist of the S. A. M., is a devotee of magic and freemasonry; a student of the occult; and a mechanical engineer by profession. He is especially fond of electrical tricks. He signs himself Paracelsus, not that he has any special love for the Bombast of Hohenheim, but because the name is a euphonic paraphrase of his own cognomen, and redolent of sorcery. {274}
Dr. Golden Mortimer, first president of the S. A. M., is a gentleman of culture. He was born in New York City, December 27, 1854. He began life as a magician, and was a pupil of Robinson, the Fakir of Vishnu. He eventually toured the country with an entertainment of the Heller order, known as “Mortimer’s Mysteries,” and was very successful. Graduating finally as a physician, he abandoned the art magique as a profession.
Krieger, the arch-master of cup-and-ball conjuring, the successor of Bosco, often drops into Martinka’s. He is of Jewish birth. With his little family he travels about, giving exhibitions of his skill, at summer hotels, seaside resorts, clubs, lyceums, etc. The errant propensities of the Krieger ménage gained for it the sobriquet of the “Wandering Few,” a paraphrase of the title of Eugene Sue’s weird novel, The Wandering Jew. To listen to Krieger’s funny accent; to see him shake his bushy locks; to watch his deft fingers manipulate the little cork balls, is to enjoy a rare treat. When the small balls grow to large ones and finally change into onions, potatoes, lemons, and apples you are quite ready to acknowledge that Krieger’s art is the acme of legerdemain.