Amusements in Arithmetic, harmless Legerdemain, or sleight-of-hand, and Tricks with Cards, will delight many a family circle, when the business of the day is over, and the book is laid aside.
Although the present volume is a book of amusements, Science has not been excluded from its pages. And why should it be? when Science is as entertaining as a fairy tale. The changes we read of in little nursery-books are not more amusing than the changes in Chemistry, Optics, Electricity, Magnetism, &c. By understanding these, you may almost become a little Magician.
Toy Balloons and Paper Fireworks, (or Fireworks without Fire,) come next. Then follow Instructions for Modelling in Card-Board; so that you may build for yourself a palace or a carriage, and, in short, make for yourself a little paper world.
Puzzles and Paradoxes, Enigmas and Riddles, and Talking with the Fingers, next make up plenty of exercise for "Guess," and "Guess again." And as you have the "Keys" in your own hand, you may keep your friends in suspense, and make yourself as mysterious as the Sphynx.
A chapter of Miscellanies—useful and amusing secrets—winds up the volume.
The "Treasury" contains upwards of four hundred Engravings; so that it is not only a collection of "secrets worth knowing," but it is a book of pictures, as full of prints as a Christmas pudding is of plums.
It may be as well to mention that the "Treasury" holds many new games that have never before been printed in a book of this kind. The old games have been described afresh. Thus it is, altogether, a new book.
And now we take leave, wishing you many hours, and days, and weeks of enjoyment over these pages; and we hope that you may be as happy as this book is brimful of amusement.