CONTENTS
| Portrait of Professor Hoffmann | [Frontispiece] |
| PAGE | |
| Preface | [vii] |
| Some New Appliances of General Utility | [1] |
| Magical Mats | [1] |
| Fairy Flower-Pots | [5] |
| Patter Introducing the Flower-Pots | [8] |
| Adhesive Cards and Tricks Therewith | [10] |
| The Missing Card | [12] |
| Novel Applications of the “Black Art” Principle | [17] |
| Black Art Mats and Black Art Patches | [17] |
| A Magical Transposition | [23] |
| The Detective Die | [26] |
| Dissolving Dice | [32] |
| Where is It? | [38] |
| Card Tricks | [46] |
| Arithmetic by Magic | [46] |
| Those Naughty Knaves | [49] |
| Magnetic Magic | [55] |
| The Telepathic Tape | [57] |
| A Card Comedy | [60] |
| The Fast and Loose Card-Box | [63] |
| A Royal Tug of War | [64] |
| Sympathetic Cards | [66] |
| Tell-Tale Fingers | [68] |
| Divination Doubly Difficult | [72] |
| A New Long Card and Tricks Therewith | [77] |
| The Mascot Coin Box | [83] |
| Miscellaneous Tricks | [88] |
| Money-Making Made Easy | [88] |
| The Missing Link | [92] |
| Culture Extraordinary | [97] |
| The Bounding Beans | [104] |
| Lost and Found | [110] |
| The Riddle of the Pyramids | [115] |
| The Miracle of Mumbo Jumbo | [123] |
| The Story of the Alkahest | [130] |
| The Oracle of Memphis | [137] |
| The Mystery of Mahomet | [146] |
| The Bewildering Blocks | [156] |
| An “Od” Force | [162] |
| The Mystery of the Three Seals | [170] |
| The Wizard’s Pocket-book | [180] |
| Concerning Patter | [192] |
| The Use of the Wand | [203] |
| A Few Wrinkles | [215] |
| L’Envoi | [222] |
LATEST MAGIC
INTRODUCTORY
SOME NEW APPLIANCES OF GENERAL UTILITY
The little appliances to be presently described are the outcome of ideas which, after a long period of incubation in my note-books, have ultimately taken concrete form in what, I venture to believe, will be found to be practical and useful items of magical apparatus. I may further claim that they combine in an exceptional degree absolute innocence of appearance with a wide range of practical utility. Examples of their uses are indicated in the following pages, but the inventive reader will find that these by no means exhaust their possibilities of usefulness.
MAGICAL MATS
The first to be described are of two different kinds, to be known as the “Card” and “Coin” Mat respectively. They are in appearance simply circular table—or plate mats, with an ornamental border as depicted in Fig. 1, and about seven inches in diameter. In the centre of each is an embossed shield, ostensibly a mere ornament, but in reality serving, as will presently be seen, an important practical purpose.