Reverting for a moment to the subject of patter, I will conclude by quoting, for the amusement rather than the instruction of the reader, an oration which (with variations) now and then formed my introductory boniment, and might on occasion still serve, in default of better.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, and members of the Royal Family, if any happen to be present, I am about to exhibit for your amusement, a few experiments in Unnatural Philosophy, otherwise Magic.
“Magic in the olden times was a very different thing, as I daresay you know, from what it is at present. In those days every respectable wizard kept a familiar spirit: a sort of magical man of all work. He cleaned the boots and knives, and when his master gave a show, it was the familiar who worked all his miracles for him. The magician only did the talking, and pocketed the takings. But the familiar did much bigger things than that. If his master’s next-door neighbour made himself disagreeable, the familiar would hoist him up and drop him in the water-butt, or into the Red Sea, according to order. If the magician wanted a week at the seaside, he had no need to pay railway fare. The familiar would just pick him up, house and all, and land him gently in the middle of the mixed bathing. The only drawback was that, sooner or later, a time came when there was no performance, because the magician had been carried off by his familiar on a pitchfork.
“As the French say, nous avons changé tout cela. Familiars are as extinct as the dodo. Perhaps it’s as well, but it makes it very much harder to be a magician. In the first place you must know all about astrology, anthropology, Egyptology and all the other ologies. You must be well posted in mathematics, hydrostatics, pneumatics and numismatics. You must know all about clairvoyance, palmistry and thought reading, sympathy and antipathy, magnetism, mesmerism, wireless telegraphy, X rays and all the other kinds of rays. Of course you must be well up in Greek and Latin, and a little Hebrew, not to mention a few other things which I forget for the moment, but I won’t stop to think of them now. When you have studied these little matters fourteen hours a day for nine or ten years, you will be as ‘chock-full of science’ as old Sol Gills himself, and you will be able to do all sorts of wonderful things, some of which I hope to show you this evening.
“Before I begin, there is just one little matter I should like to mention. You hear people talk about the quickness of the hand deceiving the eye. I don’t know whether the quickness of the hand ever does deceive the eye, but I want you to understand that you must not expect anything of that sort from me. I am naturally slow. I was born twenty minutes after I was expected, and I have been getting slower and slower ever since.
“To-night, I intend to do everything even more slowly than usual: so that you will only have to watch me closely to see exactly how it is all done. Then, when you go home, if you do as I do, and say as I say, without making any mistakes, no doubt you will be able to produce the same results. If not, there must be ‘something wrong with the works.’”
[20] Since this was written Dr. Ellison has passed into the mysterious beyond.