Harper's Round Table, July 9, 1895

by Various

Well, that was the largest crowd that ever came to an entertainment in Colby. There hadn't been anything going on all winter. Most of the young people had never seen any sleight-of-hand tricks, and all the old people turned out to help Grandma Colby. Before eight o'clock the hall was jammed. Every seat was taken, and people crowded into the broad aisle and sat on the platform, and stood up all around in a black fringe against the wall.

We had rigged up a curtain in front of the narrow platform, and at eight o'clock, when the hall was so full that no more people could get into it, the curtain was pulled aside by Peter Samuels, the stage director, and revealed the Magician's Home.

The first trick on the programme was "The Egg and the Handkerchief." Jonas was behind the table acting as Tom's assistant, while I was stationed just out of sight behind a fold of the curtain, ready to step in at the right moment, for the trick required the use of three persons.

It was simple enough, and yet Tom's blunder at the start led to the ridiculous accident which was the first of a series that made that sleight-of-hand performance a thing for Colby people to reckon time from.

The trick was, first, for Tom to produce an egg from Jonas's month by rapping him on the back of his head, Jonas already having been provided with a guinea-hen's egg secreted in his mouth for the purpose. Then, when the egg appeared, Tom was to pretend to place it in a handkerchief, really substituting for it a china egg of the same size, and slipping the real egg into a little pochette of his dress-coat. What he did, however, was to drop the real egg into the handkerchief, because, as he afterwards said, the china egg stuck in his pochette, and he could not get it out. The next part of the trick was to gather up the four corners of the handkerchief and whirl it around rapidly, saying, "Ladies and gentlemen, keep your eyes on my assistant yonder." At that point I stepped out, holding on a plate a very nice-looking sponge-cake previously prepared. Then Tom was to say: "I will now cause the egg in the handkerchief to pass into the cake. Watch closely, ladies and gentlemen."

At that point Tom should have brought the handkerchief around in such a way as to slip the china egg out into his other hand. Then I was to come forward and cut open the cake, displaying an egg (also china), previously placed within. And then Tom was to have produced the real egg, and in order to prove that it was a real egg within the cake (exchanging the two by palming one of them), he was to break the real one into a dish.

All this, which sounds so complex to describe, was simple enough as we had rehearsed it, and even with Tom's blunder of dropping the real egg in the handkerchief, might have turned out all right if he had not let go one of the corners of the handkerchief as he whirled it around his head. I, Peter Samuels, stage manager and director of that extraordinary performance of "Marvellous Feats of Prestidigitatorism," will never forget my sensations when, as I advanced solemnly with the cake, a white body whizzed through the air and struck me full on my expansive shirt bosom, breaking with a splash, and running down over my vest and trousers in a yellow stream.

I remember the scared look on Jonas's face, the perfectly horrified expression that Tom wore, and also remember dimly wondering if a guinea-fowl's egg would make as large an omlet as that of an ostrich. For it seemed to me as if I was swimming in egg batter.

The next instant the audience broke into a perfect roar of laughter. I threw the cake down on the table and rushed back of the curtain again, leaving Tom and Jonas to get out of the blunder as best they could, while I wiped off the egg as best I could with my handkerchief.

How that audience did roar! Tom stood with a knife in his hand waiting to cut the cake. He said afterwards he felt mad enough to jump down off the platform and pummel half a dozen big boys on the front seat. But he kept his temper, and when the laugh died down he cut the cake open and showed the egg, saying something about its being a small-sized egg on account of spilling a part of it on the way. So that mystified the people a little and restored the reputation of the performance, at least for a while.