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WOES OF A WIZARD



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WOES OF A WIZARD

BY

DAVID DEVANT

(Managing Partner of Maskelyne & Cookes Provincial Company)

LONDON

S. H. BOUSFIELD & CO., Ltd.

NORFOLK HOUSE, NORFOLK STREET, W.C.



TO MY FRIEND

JOHN NEVIL MASKELYNE

THE MASTER OF MY CRAFT



P R E F A C E

OMETIMES, when the work has been

finished and we have been sitting round

the fire, some of my friends have been kind

enough to be interested at hearing me relatemy experiences. It has been suggested to

me that these true tales which amused my

friends might also interest the public. I can

only hope that the man who put that idea

into my head knows the public. If my little book helps anyone to pass an hour away

pleasantly, I shall be well satisfied.

D. D.

Hillside,

Belsize R oad, Hampstead.

July 1903 .



CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

PAGE

9

19

27

39

49

67

THE GREAT COURT CONJURER

CHAPTER II

THE HOT PUDDING

CHAPTER III

OTHER PEOPLE’S WOES

CHAPTER IV

PISTOL STORIES

CHAPTER V

DEADHEADS

CHAPTER VI

THE LADY WHO WOULD NOT VANISH

CHAPTER VII

THE MAN WHO MAKES MONEY 78

7



8 Contents

PAGECHAPTER VIII

SOME QUEER REQUESTS

CHAPTER IX

CONFEDERATES AND MESMERISTS 97

CHAPTER X

A REAL ROMANCE 113

CHAPTER XI

A FEW PUPILS 126

CHAPTER XII

MINOR WOES 135

CHAPTER XIII

MY NOTE BOOK

151

CHAPTER XIV

SELLS 162

CHAPTER XV

SOME COMPENSATIONS 173



WOES OF A WIZARD

CHAPTER I

THE GREAT COURT CONJURER

HE only lessons in conjuring that I ever

received were obtained in rather a curious

way. I came across a man who was giving

conjuring and second-sight performances in a

small shop in Islington. The price of admission

was a penny, and even then business was not

always good. In order to stimulate the curiosity

of those who hung about outside the shop door,

the conjurer would occasionally emerge from

the shop and give a free show on the pavement. His usual plan was to produce money

from the whiskers of benevolent old gentle

men, from babies’ feeding bottles; in fact,

from any place where money is not usually to

be found. The conjurer once made the fatal9



12 Woes of a Wizard

Court Conjurer had been very interested in

watching him while he sketched. I wishedthat there might be no misunderstanding betweenthe Great Court Conjurer and myself, so I went

back to him and asked him what he meant by“ giving the whole game away."

"Why, I’ll teach yer all the bloomin’ tricksthere ever was, is, or could be,” he said."All those I’ve seen you perform?” I asked

eagerly." Yes,” he replied, “ all of ’em, and a lot

more.”

I was so delighted at the prospect of learningthe complete art of conjuring (I have since dis-covered that one has never learnt all there is tolearn about conjuring) that I rushed off at onceto my artist friend, and begged him to begin a

picture there and then. I forget what I promisedhim for his work, but I know that he consideredthe sum insufficient. He pointed out that bysimply putting his brush on a small canvas afew times he was going to make my fortune.Therefore, I ought to pay handsomely.

“ You may be quite sure,” he said, "that aman like your friend the conjurer is no fool.If he had ever thought of being a fool he wouldnever have been a conjurer. Well, then, sincehe is no fool, his opinion is worth having ; andif he has seen, from the few sketches I have



The Great Court Conjurer 13

made at his place, that my work is good, you

may be quite sure that it is very good ; other-wise he would not offer to give away all the

secrets of his work for one small picture from

me. Why, man, your fortune’s made! In

exchange for one small picture from me you

learn all there is to learn about conjuring froma master of the art."

Inexperienced as I was, I had my doubts about

the Great Court Conjurer being a master of

the art; but I did not discuss the point, and

eventually we came to terms.

“ What sort of a picture do you think hewants ? ’’ asked the artist.

“ I don’t know. He said a picture `to my

orders.’ ”

“ Oh," said the artist, “ I expect he wants a

little landscape, or something of that sort, to hangoutside his place as an attraction to the public.

You know," he added confidently, “ I always

thought that conjurer was a cut above the

ordinary conjurers; he has refined tastes, you

may depend upon it.”

Seeing that I was striving every day to become a conjurer myself, I thought this was

rather unkind, but I was so anxious not to deter

my friend from painting the picture that I

refrained from starting a discussion about con-

jurers and their refinement—or lack of it.



14 Woes of a Wizard

“ I’ve come to paint that picture for you,”

said my friend, the artist, as we entered the shopin which the Great Court Conjurer performed.

“ And when it’s done you won’t forget your part of the bargain ? ” I put in.

“ No, I won’t forget, — when it's done,” headded meaningly.

“Oh, I can do it for you,” said my artist,somewhat haughtily.

“ Very well, then,” said the Great CourtConjurer, “now what I want is this.”

I le proceeded to explain at great length the

kind of picture he required, and I can see nowthe long series of different expressions that flittedacross my artist’s face as the old showmanspoke. At the beginning my friend just stutteredout “ Oh! ” at the end of each sentence, buttowards the close he seemed to have recovered

his presence of mind, and he began to arguewith the conjurer.

“ But I would much rather paint you a pictureof my own making,” he said.

“ No,” said the conjurer, “ I don’t want noneof your landscapes (he put two adjectives beforelandscapes), or sea-scenes, or portraits, or any-think — except just the picture I told you of. Isit a deal ? ”

The artist said he would think it over forhalf an hour. I could not blame him; for



The Great Court Conjurer 15

certainly the picture that the Great Court

Conjurer required was no ordinary picture.The scene was to be the largest state-room in

Windsor Castle. The two principal figures in

the picture were to be the Great Court Conjurer

and his wife. The lady was to be sitting on the

throne, her eyes were to be bandaged, and theGreat Court Conjurer was to be holding up a

pocket-handkerchief. The picture, according to

the man’s own directions, was to be called :

“ What ’ave we ’ere? The State Performance.”

The Queen and all the members of the royal

family were to be sitting or standing near the two performers. The Great Court Conjurer stipulated

that the likenesses should be good, that the

men should have on military or naval uniforms,

and that the ladies were to be wearing evening-

dress and large quantities of diamonds. Orders

and decorations were to be in great profusion,

and the place was to be brilliantly lit by tall

candles. On one side was to be a small table

on which various flags, ribbons, and other articles

used in the performance were to be prominently

displayed. Some of the members of the royalfamily were to be applauding— apparently with

great energy,—some were to be open-mouthed

with astonishment, and some were to be laughing

behind gold fans studded with rubies and

sapphires. In the distance there was to be a



16 Woes of a Wizard

supper-table, sumptuously laid, with at least two

dozen powdered footmen standing on either side.One footman, more gorgeous than the others,

was to be standing near the conjurer’s table.

From the attitude of this special footman it was

to be plain to every one that he had been told

off to act as the conjurer’s assistant.

The Great Court Conjurer bargained for several

other details, but they were comparatively un

important. He was to have three large diamonds

in his shirt, and a massive ring on the third finger

of his right hand — the one that held the handker

chief. The conjurer's wife was to have an orange-coloured silk dress ; on her left arm were to be

three heavy gold bracelets, and on her right arm

there was to be a mass of lighter bracelets set

with various precious stones. Her fingers were,

of course, to be covered with rings.

When the artist said that he would like to consider the offer for half an hour, he really meant

that he wanted to find out how much money I

would give him for the work.

It was pleasant to see the wonderful and rapid

change that had come over the artist. He hadoften talked to me of loving art for art’s sake,

an occupation that he had hitherto followed quite

easily, for his pictures had certainly never brought

him in a halfpenny. Now that he had practically

received his first commission, he soon forgot that



18 Woes of a Wizard

“ Well,” said the conjurer, “ if you’ll make my

hair a little bit longer, and make my moustache

curl a little bit more upwards, I won’t say any

thing more about it.”

At last then, the picture being finished, I was

able to realise one of my ambitions. I was to

find out how all the Great Court Conjurer’s trickswere done. I went to him with a large note-book

and said that if he would speak slowly I would

write down all he had to say.

“ You needn’t trouble to write nothin’,” he said

with a grin. “ You'll find out how to do all those

tricks I’ve taught yer and sold yer, and all thosetricks I do myself, and lots more of ’em — you’ll

find ’em all out if you’ll get a book called“Modern Magic” by Professor Hoffmann,

They're all explained there. Get the book and

read it."

I have since had reason to be grateful for this

advice. But at the time I was bitterly disap

pointed with the Great Court Conjurer.



CHAPTER II

THE HOT PUDDING

I DID not always have hot pudding when I wasyoung. At times the menu was bread and

cheese, and mostly bread. Even in those days

I had an idea that if only I learnt enough aboutconjuring the hot pudding would come to meeventually, and, more or less, my hopes have beenrealised. I suppose it must have been becauseas a boy I was so fond of hot pudding, that Ideliberately worked hot pudding into the first

professional conjuring performance I ever gave.I was very young. That was why I engaged asmall hall at five shillings for the afternoon, andexpected that I should be able to make some pocket money by doing tricks for two hours.

There were two prices of admission. If youwere a parent you paid twopence ; if you had themisfortune (you will soon see why it was a mis-fortune) to be a child, you paid a penny. Forthis modest sum you were not only entertained by me, but you were entitled to share in the

19



20 Woes of a Wizard

“Grand Fairy Distribution” which came at theend of the performance.

I have never promised so much at an enter-

tainment since. In order to get the hall for five

shillings an afternoon, I had to engage it for a

series of performances, and so I announced that

each Saturday there would be a complete changeof programme. The first entertainment went

capitally. I had practised hard, and had caused

my name to be put in large letters outside the

hall. I had an idea that this, in itself, would

be sufficient to draw a large crowd.

I was not disappointed with the size of my

first audience but I noticed, after the first few

tricks, that the first two rows appeared to be

unduly anxious about the “ Fairy Distribution.”

At length, some of my audience entreated me to

come to that part of the performance. Now tohave done that would have upset my scheme.

To tell you the truth, I could not have given

the “ Fairy Distribution” in the middle of the

entertainment, but had I confessed my inability

I should have lowered myself in the eyes of

my audience. Therefore I had to pretend thatthe fairy had made an appointment to distribute

at half past four, and would not appear until then.

As a matter of fact the good fairy had taken the

money at the door, and while the performance

was in progress the good fairy was regulating



The Hot Pudding 21

the size of his distribution to the size of the

audience.Have you guessed what my “ Fairy Distribu

tion ” was? It was a real large, hot pudding — beautifully cooked, with plums inside. In shapeit was a “ roly-poly.” I remember that at thefirst performance the plums in the pudding were

very numerous ; we wished to attract the audienceagain.

The pudding was introduced adroitly. Iflattered myself that I had hit upon a new andoriginal trick, and in that respect I was right.

No conjurer of my acquaintance has ever daredto conjure with a hot pudding ; I don’t think thatmany of them have thought that their audienceswanted hot pudding.

My great trick was really a variation of theomelette trick. You know that ? The conjurer

brings on a silver-plated dish (mine was notsilver-plated) and shows it to be empty. He breaks an egg into it, puts on the lid, waves hiswand, takes off the lid, and the omelette is made !I began my trick by chopping up a few pieces ofsuet and mixing them with plums. Then I puton my lid, waved my wand, and brought out thenice, savoury-smelling, hot pudding. I know thatat the first performance I had great difficulty inrestraining myself from tasting the pudding. I almost hoped that some of my audience would be



22 Woes of a Wizard

so amazed at its sudden appearance that, they

would refrain from eating it ; then I should have

had to encourage them by helping myself to a

piece. However, the pudding was so popular

that afternoon that it all disappeared as quickly

as it had been produced ; and I was left with the

pleasing reflection that though I was exceedinglyhungry, my success as a conjurer was assured.

I may mention that I received nothing for the

performance. The money-taker, who had been

responsible for the making of the pudding, assured

me that there was “no change.”

My hot pudding trick being so successful Irepeated it on the following Saturday. To save

expense I magically “ converted ” the same

chopped suet and plums that I had used at the

first performance. Once more the trick was

successful, and once more I received no money

for my afternoon's work. This was not exactly

what I had expected, and so I stipulated that on

the following Saturday afternoon the pudding

should be of a cheaper kind. I did not discover

until the consequences could not be avoided, that

I had made a mistake in thus changing the pudding. I know now that I ought to have

changed the money-taker. No sooner had I

reached the “Fairy Distribution” in my third

performance than I saw that my audience were

becoming restless ; and just as I was about to



The Hot Pudding 23

touch the dish with my magic wand and disclose

the hot pudding, a small, lean boy—the sort of boy that eats all day without getting fat — ex-

claimed in a high, squeaky voice :

“ Please, we’re tired of pudden’. We should

like somethink else—sweets, or nuts, or oranges.”

The suggestion horrified me. Here was mygreat popular success failing at the third per-

formance ! The worst of it was that directly one

boy had spoken the others began to chime in.

They said unkind things about my pudding.

They referred to its stodginess, and to the fact

that it was not half so good as the puddings thatmother made on Sundays. I reasoned with the

grumblers. I pointed out to them, first of all,

that they had spoken too late ; they ought to

have sent in their requests before the commence-

ment of the performance. Then the spokesman—

I can see him now, the ugly, awkward little

brute — replied to me. He said that according

to the bill stuck upon the door I had promised

to give a complete change of programme every

Saturday. This was the third Saturday, and

they had had hot pudding twice before. I madethe obvious reply that I used a fresh pudding at

every performance and therefore the programme

was changed. To tell you the truth, I was a

little annoyed at this ingratitude and interruption,

and I pointed out to them that if they did not



24 Woes of a Wizard

appreciate the performance there were plenty of

other little boys in the neighbourhood, who would be only too pleased to get an afternoon’s amuse

ment and some pudding for a penny.

By this time I knew that the pudding was

getting horribly cold and clammy, so I said the

magic words, and a few others that I hope werenot audible, and I brought my magic wand down

with a smash on the tin cover. The grumblers

ate the pudding in silence.

The audience at the next performance was

smaller; the “Fairy Distribution” was accord

ingly reduced in size ; and the supply of plumswas very meagre. The absence of plums seemed

to have an exhilarating effect on the front row.

They asked for plums ; they suggested that I

was keeping back the plums for myself, and one

boy even went so far as to say that he could

make a better pudding with a lump of dough

and a beer-can. I treated the remarks with

silent disdain.

Every week after that my Saturday afternoon

audience became smaller; consequently the

“Fairy Distributions” were almost plumless.At last — it was one wretched, wet Saturday

afternoon — everything seemed to go wrong all at

once. One boy, who had been helped by me

most liberally to hot pudding, complained that he

did not want quite so much at once ; he preferred



26 Woes of a Wizard

useful pudding, but when it was divided up into

small pieces and allowed to get cold, it seemed to be a kind of imitation putty. Since then I have

often heard of tricks falling flat, and jokes falling

flat, but I never remember having seen or heard

of anything that fell quite so flat as that pudding.



CHAPTER III

OTHER PEOPLE’S WOES

I HAVE often been the cause of indicting a

great deal of misery on some of the kind

people who have come to see me. You may

remember that in one of my card tricks I borrowa lady’s handkerchief and give a pack of cards

to another member of the audience. A card is

selected .without my seeing it; the pack is shuffled

and given to someone else ; the lady’s handker-

chief is then placed in a small cabinet ; a littleslow music is played, and as the last chord dies

away I open the cabinet and take out the hand-

kerchief. Then I ask the gentleman who chose

the card to tell everyone what it was. On one

occasion it happened to be a five of hearts. I

took the lady’s handkerchief out of the cabinet,held it up, and, as usual, showed that the card

which had been chosen had mysteriously got into

the cabinet, and had printed itself on the hand-

kerchief. There was the five of hearts right in

the centre of the handkerchief! It was always2 7



28 Woes of a Wizard

my custom when doing this trick to tell the

lady quietly, as I handed the handkerchief backto her, that I had not damaged the handker

chief in any way, and that the red paint would

all disappear in the wash. Upon the particular

evening to which I refer, the lady was extremely

kind, and said that she did not really mind

whether the five of hearts came out in the

wash, or whether it remained on the handkerchief,

because it was only an old one. Then she

crumpled it up and put it in her pocket. Later

on in the evening she took it out, and used it for

the purpose for which a handkerchief is intended,and in doing so painted her nose a bright ver

milion. As the audience were leaving the hall

I overheard two old ladies talking about the lady

who had lent me the handkerchief.

Oh, yes, my dear,” said one lady, “she’s

a terrible sufferer, she is — has such awfulattacks of indigestion. Did you notice her nose

to-night? Quite painful, I’m sure.”

I once made up my mind to play a little

practical joke on a friend of mine who was very

keen on collecting engravings. His walls werecovered with pictures, and so I had no difficulty

in selecting one well-known one, and getting

an artist friend to imitate just one corner of the

picture. I took this corner and fastened it on

my friend’s picture. When I went round in



Other People's Woes 29

the evening to show them a few tricks, l could

hardly keep myself from laughing for thinking

what a frightful state of mind my friend would

be in, when he saw me go up to one of his pet

engravings and apparently tear off the corner.

Of course I was going to continue the trick by

restoring the picture in the way that the “ torn playing card ” is usually restored. I was so

eager to do that trick, and to see my friend’s

face absolutely glowing with anger, as he saw

one of his pet pictures apparently destroyed,

that I ate scarcely any supper. When the time

came for me to do my tricks I began on thetorn engraving. I was not disappointed in seeing

my friend get very angry ; indeed, his face was

absolutely livid. I felt a little embarrassed

myself, more especially when I discovered that

I had torn off a corner of the wrong picture !

He had two copies!

A very pretty trick with white roses can be

performed by anyone, without much knowledge

of sleight-of-hand. You get two or three

roses and a little analine dye of various colours.

You keep the colours quite distinct and dusta little dye on each rose. Then shake each rose,

and the fine powdered dye will not be noticeable.

Then bring your roses before your audience

and tell them that by watering them with your

magic spray you will cause them to become



30 Woes of a Wizard

coloured. The magic spray simply contains a

little eau-de-cologne or other scent. The spiritfrom the scent dissolves the dye, and immediately

each rose is coloured. I had taught a pupil

this once, and on the next morning I received

the following letter from her father :

“Dear Mr . Devant,—.

“ Will you kindly not teach my daughter any

tricks which will entail the dyeing of the drawing-room

carpet, grand piano, and the hearthrug? I may tell

you that these are only a few of the articles which

have been coloured since you gave your lesson last

night ; but we are hoping that the dye from the diningroom carpet and curtains can be removed. At present,

however, the entire household is being dyed. Dye

is in the air. My daughter was going out to a dance

this evening, but she is afraid that people will think

her rather strange unless she can manage to get her

arms and hands any other colour but an apple-green.

I shall be very glad if you will confine your tricks, inthe future, to some of a less harmful kind.

“ Yours faithfully."

I may add that the writer of this letter had

a certain amount of justification for it. The

trick I described was very pretty, but it iscertainly very messy unless you are careful.

That is why I never perform it myself. I once

tried it at the Egyptian Hall, and a friend who

came into my dressing-room told me he had

never been in such a pretty place in his life, and



Other People’s Woes 31

he supposed I had done it myself. He was quite

right, but I did not tell him that I had nevermeant to do it myself.

I was once doing the watch and rabbit trick in

a hall, and had borrowed the watch of a friend of

mine. When he came on to the stage he

whispered to me :“ I have a small bottle of champagne in my

pocket; you can produce that if you like. No

one knows anything about it, and it will be quite

safe.”

When the time came for me to produce the

rabbit, I remarked upon the fact that the watchwas tied round the rabbit’s neck with a blue

ribbon. I said to the man : “ This rabbit is

not a teetotaler, I’m afraid ; ” and with that I

produced his bottle of champagne. This trick

was highly successful, because my friend forgot

all about the bottle of champagne, and left it

with me.This variation of the trick was so successful

that I determined that I would add it to the trick

in my other performances. I thought that bottled

champagne might be rather a dangerous stuff tohandle, and so I did the trick with half a bottle

of port. The trick was an immense success,

because the friends of the man on whom I found

half a bottle of port never believed that he had

not had it on him when he came into the hall.



32 Woes of a Wizard

After a time, however, although that trick went

down very well, it was not quite so good as I had

anticipated it would be. The fact was, men

started to claim the port after I had produced it.

just as the man was leaving the stage he would

put out his hand and say:

"Well, you found that little bottle on me andI’m very glad. I’ve got an invalid wife at home ;

it’ll just do her good, I’ll take it with me.

Thanks."

I imagine that at that time there must have

been a large number of men in England who

had invalid wives, and who yet managed toget away to come and see my performance when

I was in their town. I must have given away

many dozens of half-bottles of port to invalid

wives in this way. Perhaps you may be wonder

ing why I have included that story in the chapter

called “ Other People’s Woes." But then you

don’t know that port. I do. I bought it and I

know what it cost ; and I know what you have

to give for half a bottle of good port.

On one occasion 1 borrowed a wedding-ring.

I usually have some little difficulty in getting alady to lend me a wedding-ring, but on this

occasion I was kept waiting for fully five minutes

before I at length induced a dear old lady to

let me use her wedding-ring in a trick. Of course

the wedding-ring had to be vanished, and travel




round the room, and in and out of people’s

pockets, and generally behave in a way that isquite foreign to any ordinary self-respecting

wedding-ring.

You will know that it is equally certain that at

the end of the trick the wedding-ring was dis

covered neatly folded up in a piece of tissue

paper, which was sealed up in an envelope,which was found in the centre of a new loaf of

bread. When I handed the envelope back to

the lady she protested that the ring was not

there. People began to titter ; but on this occasion

I did not lose my head, for I was absolutelycertain that the ring was there, because I had

put it there myself.

The lady continued to tell me in a very

loud voice that I had lost her wedding-ring;

and that she was completely undone ; that she

wished she had not lent it to me ; and that itserved her right ; and that she would never see

it again. It was soon evident that the remainder

of the audience regarded me as a human monster,

who had come there with a fixed intention of

swindling a harmless old widow out of her

wedding-ring. At length, because the people at

the back were getting rather noisy in their

demands for that wedding-ring, I suggested that

I should come down from the platform and help

the old lady find it. Her friends jumped at the

3



34 Woes of a Wizard

idea ; several of them beamed with delight and

giggled as I came off the platform. Theysaid :

“ Why, my dear, it’s all a joke — now comes

the trick. He's got it on him somewhere. He'll

find it all right. Don’t cry.”

He had not got it on him, and it was not the

trick, I could only assure the old lady that the

wedding-ring had been in the packet, and that she

must have dropped it, and that it must have rolled

away. I told her that if she would kindly wait

until after the other people had gone I would

have the place swept and searched, and wouldguarantee that the ring should be found. I am

happy to say that the audience seemed a little

reassured at this. When the performance was

over I had the place searched, and the wedding

ring was discovered between the cracks in the

flooring. It was a very small ring, and it had been worn a great deal.

When I returned it to the old lady, with my

profuse apologies for the inconvenience I had

caused her, she retorted that it was not her

wedding-ring. She said she knew her wedding

ring ; and if it had not been for the fact that she

was a kind woman and had had sons of her own,

and did not wish to see me in trouble, she should

have known what to do. I protested that I had

done nothing except to restore her wedding-ring,




and she said that I was only making matters

worse, and that since I appeared to be so muchin need of the necessaries of life that I could

stoop to robbery, she would give me the ring

which I had found, and which she hastened to

add was not her own.

I do not know what would have been the end

of that little mishap, but just at that moment the

old lady’s companion came into the empty hall

and recognised in me the conjurer who, a year

before, had given his services on behalf of their

Sunday School. The companion assured the old

lady that the wedding-ring I had found was herwedding ring, and that I was not by profession a

thief. The old lady begged my pardon, and said

that she had not noticed the wedding-ring was

hers because she had not been wearing her right

glasses—which I thought was a very feeble excuse

for her rudeness. However, we parted very goodfriends, and I have often appeared at that hall

since on behalf of a particular charity in which

that old lady is very interested. But I do not

borrow her wedding-ring.

Once when I was riding in a ’bus on a wet

day, I found a two-shilling piece amongst the

straw on the floor of the ’bus. The ’bus con

ductor looked at me rather enviously, and I

thought I heard him murmur something about

some people having all the luck, and I afterwards



36 Woes of a Wizard

discovered three two-shilling pieces at the far

end of the ’bus, and a half-sovereign under theseat. When we got to the end of the journey I

heard the ’bus conductor tell the driver that

some one had been throwing money about inside

the 'bus that morning. He had seen a bloke

pick up about sixteen shillings, and he meant to

use his dinner-time by turning the 'bus inside out.

The driver said that, in that case, if there was

any money to be had, he would willingly assist

the 'bus conductor in finding it.

It was a very hot day, and I understand that

those two men worked exceedingly hard for thewhole of their dinner-hour. I took the same

bus on my return journey, and the conductor

told me what had happened. He said that both

he and the driver had lost their dinner, and the

least I could do was to give them some of the

money I had found. I told him that he was avery careless man, and that he had not searched

the ’bus properly. Then I found half-a-crown

in the straw and got off. I saw him go up on to

the top of the bus, and I heard him inform the

driver that I was a “ blooming miracle.”

I once unconsciously caused a nice white-haired

old gentleman to have a very unhappy five

minutes. I had asked him to add up nine figures

on a slate ; and whether it was that he was old

and he had forgotten how to do simple addition,




or whether it was that he was so overcome at being singled out for such public recognition, I

do not know ; but I am absolutely certain that he

could not add 225, 326, 421. He got very red

in the face; made out that the answer was in

millions ; and generally upset the trick.

I was once recognised by a man in church whowas assisting in taking the collection. He

became very confused when he saw me, and

withdrew the collection plate hurriedly.

Some of my readers may have seen me

produce a box of matches from a man’s beard

when he comes on the stage. I usually ask the

man beforehand if he is a smoker ; and then when

I have found that he is, I tell him not to carry

his matches about in that absurd way. Often

and often those matches are claimed by the man

who comes on the stage. They just say at theend of the trick: “ My matches, I think ?

thanks,” and put the box in their pocket. On

one occasion a man told me that the matches

were his own, and I ventured to suggest that he

had made a little mistake, and that they were my

matches. He said that he was absolutely certainthey were his own ; and a man from the back of

the hall shouted: “Give the man his matches

back.” I, however, persisted in asking him

whether the matches were just the ordinary plain

wax matches ; and the man, who by this time was



C H A P T E R I VPISTOL STORIES

I SUPPOSE I have caused more commotion

by doing tricks with pistols than I have

with any other kind of apparatus. One of my

earliest mistakes was made with a pistol. It

happened at a performance given in a small

hall for a charity. In the middle of the enter

tainment I suddenly remembered that I had no

charge for my pistol. It was obviously impossible

for me to go through the trick without producingthat wonderful effect caused by firing a pistol,

and so I sent out for some gun-powder. My

messenger was a very good boy. I had told

him not to come back without some gun-powder,

and he assured me that he would not. He

certainly did bring some gun-powder, but Idid not discover until it was too late that it

was the wrong kind of gun-powder. It was

of the kind usually called, I believe, “ blasting

powder.”

In the course of my trick I had to fire the3 9



40 Woes of a Wizard

pistol at some one’s head. I had previouslyassured all the nervous ladies in the audience

that no ill effects would follow. 1 had as my

assistant a very good-natured Sunday School

superintendent. Possibly you may not know

what “blasting powder” is. I confess that

I did not know of it until that night ; but I foundout all about it pretty quickly then, and so did

the Sunday School superintendent. No sooner

had I fired the pistol than he gave a yell of pain,

put his hand to his face, and shouted out that

he was shot. The audience thought that it was

all part of my performance, and they drowned

his cries of pain with shouts of laughter. No

one laughed more loudly than the vicar himself.

The more the unfortunate man howled, the

louder the people roared with laughter ; and

it was not until they saw me examining the poor man’s face that they began to realise that

something had gone wrong.

Luckily for me it was not anything very serious.

The powder had simply peppered into his skin ;

and though the pain must have been excruciating,

the man was not seriously injured. The vicarstopped the performance, and I felt that my

reputation—like the man’s face— had been blasted.

I remember that the injured man had a young

son who insisted on looking on the bright side

of things. This boy came up to the company



Pistol Stories 41

several times in the course of the evening and

said cheerfully :

“ He’s got some more out, and he thinks

his face will heal up by next Christmas, if he’s

careful.”

For some weeks afterwards I was not in great

request as a conjurer. Nervous ladies seemedto have a prejudice against coming to my

entertainments, and finally I had to resort to

a little strategy to get them into the place.

Not only did I advertise that there would be

no pistols or fire-arms used in the course of the

performance, and that nothing would happen

which could give any offence, physical, intellectual,

or moral, to any member of the audience, but

I also held out a tempting bait to anyone who

would come and see me. I had large bills

printed—by myself—which set out that I was prepared to offer a reward of £1,000 to anyone

who did not find the doors open at half-past

seven.

I suppose I ought to have taken that mishap

with the pistol to heart, and have made a solemn

resolution that never again would I use a pistolin the course of my performance. Unfortunately,

I did not do so. Many years after I had peppered

the good school superintendent with powder, I was

going to a very nice house in Mayfair to give a

performance. I decided that I would use a new



42 Woes of a Wizard

pistol trick which I had just invented. I had the pistol with me, and everything else necessary for

the trick.When I arrived at the house I was shown into a

very nice drawing-room, and was told that I couldhave the place entirely to myself for half an hour.

I made all my preparations, and laid the pistol Iwas going to use on a side-table. Then I wentout into the hall and asked a servant to get me

a duster. I particularly did not want anyone togo into the room just then. I had some littledifficulty in finding the servant or a bell ; but at

last I got my duster, and then, just as I wasgoing back to the room, I heard a loud report

followed by a shriek.I rushed into the drawing-room and found

there the young son of the house— a youth abouteighteen. He was very excited, and the momenthe saw me he asked me what I meant by leaving

a loaded revolver about. It seems that he hadsneaked into the room, picked the revolver up,and [lulled the trigger. I am not going to saywhat the revolver was loaded with ; but when

they came to see what damage had been done,they found that one of the curtains had been nicely perforated, a window had been broken, and thewindow sash splintered.

By this time the whole household were in theroom, and every one was talking and arguing at



Pistol Stories 43

once. The young man who had fired the re

volver maintained that I ought not to have left

a loaded revolver about. I naturally replied that

he had no business in the room, and had no right

to touch what did not belong to him. I am

thankful to say that the young man's father

agreed with me ; and that what looked like a veryunfortunate accident ended quite happily. The

real performance was entirely a success ; but I

was particularly asked to omit the pistol trick.

I was once compelled to conjure for my life.

An excitable Frenchman called at the stage door

of a hall at which I was performing, and sent in

his card to me. When I saw him I recognised

in him — well — perhaps that part of the story-

had better not be told ; but anyhow he was a

dangerous character, and a man to be avoided.

We quarrelled ; at least, he quarrelled with me,and then challenged me to a duel. To his great

surprise I accepted his challenge eagerly, and we

met outside the town the following morning.

The news had spread pretty quickly and a large

number of people were at the wood before us.

When the Frenchman came to load his pistol hefound that the cartridges had been forgotten.

In despair his second came to my second and

begged me to oblige them with a few cartridges.

I replied that it seemed rather hard lines that I

should have to bring cartridges there in order



44 Woes of a Wizard

that they might be fired at myself; but, still, rather

than baulk the Frenchman of his desire to obtain

what he called satisfaction, I said he could have

the cartridges. His second selected those he

wanted and took them away.

The signal was given to us to fire, and

precisely at the same moment I staggered backand fell full length on the soft turf.

I am not certain how long I lay there, but

when I got up two policemen were standing near

my opponent, and I was told that he would be

charged with maliciously wounding me. I was

also given to understand that a charge would be made out against me. I am not absolutely

certain what the charge was going to be, but

I remember that there was something about

“grievous bodily harm” in it.

It was not until I assured the good policementhat I could not have been hit, because the box

from which the Frenchman’s second had taken

the cartridges was not the box from which he

thought he had taken them, that the unfortunate

man was allowed to go.

You may say that this is an utterly impossiblestory, and that I could not possibly have

performed conjuring tricks with cartridges while

I was in danger of being shot down myself. To

this I reply first, that I knew I was in no

danger of being shot down, and secondly, that I



Pistol Stories 45

do not pretend that the duel was a real duel. It

was a very nice little piece of advertising business,worked in connection with a company to which

I belonged many years ago ; and it did us a lot

of good. I daresay if you went to the place now,

and reminded some of the inhabitants of the

duel that was fought in the wood, they wouldremember it.

Now I come to think of some of those early

days, I hardly know how to stop writing. I have

performed at queer places, and at strange times.

Sometimes our little company would go to a

market-town, and would perform there as longas we could get an audience. Then we would

drive off to the neighbouring villages to give our

entertainment at the various schoolrooms. The

difficulty always then was to get enough chairs.

Our manager was a very energetic man, and

directly he got to the village schoolroom he

would get hold of a few big boys and would say

to them :

“ Look here, my boys, if you want to come

and see our show for nothing, you get us a

few chairs.”About one hour afterwards you could see the

landscape absolutely dotted with chairs, all coming

towards the schoolroom. We used to get more

chairs than we wanted ; and people’s nice arm

chairs and couches used to have to stay outside



46 Woes of a Wizard

the schoolroom until the performance was over,

and we could induce boys to take them back totheir proper owners. Then, of course, there

was the difficulty of the piano. We could not

cart a piano about with us on these occasions,

and so we had to go to the nearest house to the

schoolroom — which was generally the Vicarage

—and rap at the door and say :

“ Good-morning. We are members of the

company that is going to perform in your school

room. Will you kindly oblige us by lending

us your piano?”

The request may seem rather cool ; in fact,I don’t know that I ought not to have included

this reminiscence in the chapter called “ Queer

Requests.” But the odd part of it was that

these country clergymen used to get so interested in our entertainment that they cheer

fully and willingly lent us anything. I haveeven borrowed new laid eggs to conjure with,

and have forgotten to give them back again. At

such times our company was very small, and

the duty of the manager was to manage, to see

people in the seats, arrange for the whole of

the lights, sell the tickets, and keep the money.One manager we had did everything very well;

in fact, he kept the money too well — so well

that we never got any of it at all, and had to

tramp back to our head-quarters.



48 Woes of a Wizard

As we were driving home we took upon our

selves to lecture that manager upon the sin oftrying to run away when you may be sure you

are going to be caught. He replied that he

thought we had been going a bit too far in

firing on him ; and that, after all, if we had

hit him we should probably have been very

sorry for it afterwards. Then we told him thatwe had not fired at him, and had never had any

intention of firing at him, and that we did not

even possess any fire-arms.

This being a book for the home, I cannot

reproduce what that manager said when he foundthat the pistol that had been fired was not our

pistol, and was, in fact, not a pistol at all.



C H A P T E R V

DEADHEADS

BELIEVE I have come across every typeof deadhead, from the man who says that

he is the country representative of the Times,and who is afterwards found to be connected

with a " We-move-with-the-Times ” local stores,to the man who says that he is dying of consumption, and that if he sees me do the bigflag trick — which some of his friends have toldhim about —he thinks that it will do him good,

He would also like a ticket for his sister, becauseit is not safe for him to be out alone. Youknow that sister? Yes, and so do I.

Perhaps the champion deadhead of all (nowdon’t be frightened, I’m not going to give yourname away) is a man who called on me a year

or two ago. (If he reads this he will see that Ihave exaggerated a little there.) This gentlemanasked for seven seats for the performance ofMaskelyne and Cooke’s Mysteries. I suggestedto him, as nicely as I could, that, if he could give

49

4



50 Woes of a Wizard

me some good reason why he should have the

seats, I might perhaps be able to comply withhis demand. I had then been staying in the

town for four weeks.

In reply to my request this man, who, by

the way, was a clergyman, said that he was

very poor, that he had a large family, and that

everyone was very kind to him by helping him

in every possible way. He then stepped outside

and beckoned to some one to come in. In walked

a girl of about seventeen, who was introduced

as “ my daughter.” I was about to tell the

young lady’s father that I would think aboutgiving him the seats he had asked for, when

he stepped outside again and called in a boy

of fifteen. He continued to produce children

in this mysterious way, and when the whole six

were in front of me, he said :

“ There you are, Mr. Devant. Those are mychildren, and they all want to come and see your

show. They are all very talkative children ; I’m

sure you can't hear yourself speak sometimes

in our house for the noise those children make.

They are always chattering. The eldest takes

after her dear mother ; in fact, they all do.”

I told him that I considered that happy state

of things was highly satisfactory ; but the dear,

silly old man did not see that I had implied that

it was a good thing that the children had not



Deadheads 51

taken after him. I was about to add some other

little pleasantry of this sort when he interruptedme and said :

“ Now you see, Mr. Devant, the children are

so talkative that if you give us all seats for your

performance tor Saturday afternoon, they will

talk so much about it that you will get a splendid

advertisement for nothing.”

This happened on the Thursday. I pointed

out to the parson that I was leaving the town

after Saturday night, and so I did not quite see

what benefit I should derive from anything his

children might say about me on Saturdayafternoon.

“ But another year, Mr. Devant,” said the

cheery old man ; “ another year — you will come

another year, of course ? We have heard what a

splendid entertainment you give, and everyone

will want to come another year.”I asked him if he really thought that, and he

said that he was quite certain that the whole

neighbourhood would come another year. I

replied that in that case any advertisement that

his children could give me by talking about mewas quite unnecessary, because if the whole

neighbourhood came to see the show another

year the hall would not be large enough. That

seemed to checkmate him for a time and there

was a lull in the conversation, during which the



52 Woes of a Wizard

children regarded me in an ashamed sort of way,

as though I had been playing practical jokes ontheir venerable father. The old man—he was

not really old, but he looked old — returned to the

attack. He put aside the immense advantage

he was going to confer on me, by using seven

of my best seats for nothing, and adopted theusual begging tactics, He was a poor man, and

the children were just home from school, and

they would so much enjoy it, etc., etc. I re-

lented, and gave him a pass for the six children

and himself. While we had been talking the

people had begun to arrive at the early doorsfor the evening performance. I am glad to say

that there was rather a rush that night. He

smiled fatuously at me for a few moments, and

then whispered confidentially :

“ Do you know, Mr. Devant, we heard you

were here through your advertisements in the

papers and on the hoardings.”

I do not know whether the old man thought

that that information would be comforting to me ;

but when I told him that we usually expected

a few people to see the advertisements, hesaid;

`Indeed! I always thought that you put the

advertisement in the papers, and then they sent

a reporter and gave you a paragraph in the paper

on the following week. I once arranged a bazaar,



Deadheads 53

quite a large affair. Mr. Trillingham, our local

Member of Parliament — you may have heard of

him in London — was going to open the bazaar,

but at the last moment was prevented. The

editor of our local paper said that if he had been

there the affair would have been of some public

interest; but as he was not there he could onlyinsert the report of the bazaar if we paid for it

as an advertisement, or if we gave an advertise-

ment beforehand. My wife opened the bazaar,

and my eldest son there did some conjuring tricks

which were a great success, and-------- ”

The eldest son interrupted his father to assureme that they were only a very few tricks, and very

simple ones ; and that he was quite sure he did

them very badly, although he added hastily that

he was equally sure no one had seen through

them.The champion deadhead told his son and me

that his son did the tricks very well indeed ;

although, of course, he added, lest I should be

offended, and withdraw those free passes, “ he

was nothing like so good as you, Mr. Devant —

he wasn’t really.”Seeing the people going into the hall the

champion deadhead rubbed his hands together

and said that he was glad I was going to have

such a good audience. I thanked him, and then

he said :



56 Woes of a Wizard

The eyes of the champion deadhead sparkled, but he said, rather feebly as I thought :

“ No, thank you ; really, no, thank you. My

children can wait quite well till they get home.

They won’t be much more hungry than they

generally are, and I’ve no doubt there is a nice

supper waiting for them.”He said this in a way that suggested that in

all probability the supper would have faded away

before the children got back to it. The children

seemed to have the same idea, for they smiled

feebly, and I thought I heard a whisper of

“ bread and dripping.”

Having disposed of my manager-—he was on

the point of suggesting that the hall-keeper’s wife

was a very good cook, and if a steak and potatoes

would be acceptable he thought they could be

managed without the slightest difficulty —I turnedto the old man and told him that I could not

possibly give him seats for that night's perform

ance. He might keep his seven free passes for

the Saturday afternoon ; but if he thought that

his children would not enjoy the performance at

the first sight of it, then he had better not bringthem. He hastily assured me that it was not

that at all. He had only been thinking that

there might be some empty seats at the evening’s

performance then coming on ; and he had thought

that it would be so much nicer for me to have



Deadheads 57

the place full. He added slyly that his children

were very strong in the arms, and that when they

clapped their hands—well, “you should have

heard them at our bazaar,” he added, “when I

recited `Half a league, half a league, half a

league onward.' We always say that they make

an audience in themselves.”I said nothing; and in the course of a few

minutes he rose to go. As he was leaving he

remarked that there did not appear to be so

many people coming in just then ; but as I did

not respond to the hint, he turned to one of the

younger children and said :

“Never mind, Tommy, my boy; we can't

come to-night, but we’ll all make up for it on

Saturday afternoon. We can’t come in to-night—

not to-night. . .``

He kept on repeating “ not to-night" in a waythat made me feel that I was some stern parent

dealing with a large family of my own, and that

the old man was my eldest son. I kept up to

the character by not changing my mind. My

manager told me afterwards that they stood a

long time outside the hall and watched the latecomers arrive. I rather fancy that the old man

was making calculations as to the number of

seats that were probably vacant.

They all turned up on the Saturday afternoon.

The free pass was duly presented and nine



58 Woes of a Wizard

people passed in. My check-taker stopped themand said that the pass admitted only seven. Thechampion deadhead retorted that he knew Mr.Devant, and that he was quite sure that therewould be no objection to nine coming in. I wassent for, and when he saw me the old man

grasped my hand and said :“So glad to see you again. You see we’ve

come. It has been a long journey; you see wecannot afford the train both ways (I looked roundin fear lest my manager should overhear him, andshould suggest that he would send for a cab forthe return journey). “ I’ve brought my dearwife with me; I felt sure that you would notmind. I did not ask for a ticket for her becauseI thought you would take it for granted that Ishould bring her. And then we thought it was

such hard lines on our dear old nurse to leaveher at home. She gets out very little, andseldom goes to an entertainment of any kind, soshe’s sure to enjoy yours. (I bowed my acknowledgments of that compliment.) She is shortlygoing to leave us ; you see they are practically

all grown up now, and so the dear old nurse isgoing away to South Africa. I've told her to besure and talk a great deal about you and yourentertainment to all the people on board ship onthe way out, and to all the people she meets inCape Town and other places wherever she may



Deadheads 59

be ; and you will talk about Mr. Devant, and his

wonderful performance, won’t you, nursie ? ”

The nurse replied that if she did not know

how to talk when she was told, then what was

the good of her being a nurse ? I do not

pretend to follow that argument, but perhaps

some of my readers who understand nurses cantell me what the dear old soul meant.

Of course they asked for programmes, and

when the programme boy suggested that the

present of a seat did not include a programme,

they told him that he was very impudent, and

that they were all friends of mine, and were goingto talk about the performance to other people.

My manager came to the rescue and gave them

the programmes. He expressed his regret that

there were no books of the words, but said

that he would ask me to speak very slowly, so

that if anyone liked to write my “patter” down

they could do so, and perhaps it would come in

useful at the next bazaar. The parson thanked

my manager effusively, and said that it was re-

freshing to find a man so kind and generous

and obliging.Later on in the afternoon, during the interval,

the parson beckoned my manager towards him

and said in a whisper :

“ You were kind enough on Thursday evening

to suggest that some— er— refreshments of—



60 Woes of a Wizard

er — some kind might be provided. Would it

be troubling you too much to let me have just

one bun for my little boy? It’s getting near

his tea-time and he’s so hungry, and if we go

out and get something I’m afraid we shall miss

the next thing. It would be so very kind of

you, if you would.”The fond mother added a request that the

bun might have no currants in it, as Tommy

never could digest currants. Her husband

whispered that that did not matter, at which

his wife became rather cross and said that it

did matter very considerably, and she supposedthat if the poor child was sick it would matter

very much.

My manager came and asked me what to do,

and I told him that, as he had brought all the

trouble on himself, he could go out and buy the boy a bun and put it down to me.

When 1 went on to the stage to show my

experiments in sleight-of-hand, I made the usual

request that a member of the audience would

come forward and act as my assistant. The

parson and his wife and the six children andthe nurse all rose in a body. 1 know that they

meant to be kind, and that it was merely their

way of showing that they were grateful for the

free seats; but the remainder of the audience

did not see the matter quite in that light. They



Deadheads 61

thought that the nine people were confederates

of mine, and I had some little difficulty in con-vincing them that the family were not members

of my company.

At the conclusion of the performance the

champion deadhead came to thank me for having

given him and his family a very enjoyable

evening.

“And now,” he said, laying his hand on my

shoulder and looking up into my face, “ I want

you to promise me one thing. I want you to

be sure and let me know well beforehand next

year when you are coming. Then, you see,we shall be able to come on the first night and

go away and talk about it, and that will do you

such a lot of good ; and if you change the pro-

gramme after the first fortnight we shall be able

to come again—twice in the month — and that

will do you all the more good."I do not know, even now, quite how he managed

to do it, but that man left me with the impression

that he had really come to see the performance

solely with the desire to confer a favour on

me ; and I had a kind of vague idea that I was

indebted to him for having accepted nine free

passes. He was a wonderful man, and I am

rather looking forward to meeting him again

on my next tour. I am a little curious to see

in what way he will extend his requests to me,



62 Woes of a Wizard

for I do not quite understand how he can im

prove on his first effort, unless he asks to beallowed to bring his wife’s relations.

Beside the champion deadhead all others are

comparatively modest in their demands. Occa

sionally I am asked for a couple of seats for a

man who has found out—so he says — how all

the tricks and illusions are done ; but if I give

him two seats I can rely on his keeping his

mouth shut. When I get a note of this kind

I generally send out word that if the bearer

will wait a moment I will come and see him.

I then let him wait until the cheaper seats haveall been sold, and the people are in their places,

and then I tell the man that if it is a case of

his paying for a seat, or seats,or telling every

body all my secrets, I should prefer him to adopt

the latter course. He usually retorts that he

did not mean it quite like that, and he would be very much obliged for a couple of seats. I

consider that I am then within my rights in

telling him that the free list has been entirely

suspended, and in referring him to the box-

office.

There is another kind of deadhead which I

used to meet pretty frequently when I was on

tour, but which, I am happy to say, is now

getting rather scarce. This deadhead never

comes to ask for seats. His method of getting



Deadheads 63

— or rather trying to get — a free entertainment,

is as follows :First of all he stops me in the street — I

should add that this kind of deadhead only grows

in the smaller towns — and calling me by name

he says that he cannot help stopping me as

some of his friends have so much enjoyed my

show, and he hopes it is doing well. After afew moments he blurts out an invitation to me

to come to supper, one evening after my

show. He adds that his wife and children were

so interested in seeing the performance that

they very much want to have the pleasure of

shaking me by the hand. At this I blush and

look confused— at least I used to, but I know

better now — and murmur something about being

delighted. Then this deadhead goes on to

apologize for the homeliness of his household.

He says that he hopes I won’t mind taking themas they are, without any ceremony.

When I get to the house I usually find that

I am expected not only by my host and hostess,

but by a large circle of friends. Everyone is

in evening dress, and it is evident that they

have been having a very good time generally.We have a nice little supper, and then in the

drawing-room afterwards, someone begins to talk

about conjuring. In all probability a youth will

assert that such and such a trick cannot be done



Deadheads 65

suggests that perhaps on another evening I

might be able to oblige him. At the samemoment I remember that I am engaged for every

evening that I am spending in their town. The

rest of the party passes off rather quietly, and

the host is not quite so eager to show me those

little courtesies that a guest expects.I think that this kind of deadhead is even

Worse than the kind that goes to the box office

and demands seats on false pretences. I used

to be caught regularly by these home-loving

deadheads, who like to have the show entirely

private, and without paying for it ; but now Ido not respond eagerly to that kind of invitation,

unless I happen to be wanting an evening’s

amusement all to myself.

Before closing this chapter I should like to

correct an impression that seems to be rather

general in the provinces. Many of the great

British public, especially in the smaller towns,

regard representatives of the Press as deadheads.

I should like to add— though it seems hardly

necessary to do so— that I do not share in

that opinion. So many people in a small countrytown are rather jealous of the representatives

of the Press, because pressmen always receive

invitations. I have reason to believe that these

invitations are not altogether unacceptable

because, whenever we are in a town for any

5



CHAPTER VI

THE LADY WHO WOULD NOT VANISH

F people who arrange bazaars and other

entertainments for charities were to come

to me and ask me how to make their enterprises

profitable, I should answer : “ Get a young andenthusiastic amateur conjurer ; make a side show

of him ; let him perform frequently during the

afternoon and evening, and charge sixpence

admission. The young and enthusiastic amateur

conjurer will fill the hall with his friends, and

all will be well with that bazaar,’ I know,

because I first appeared in public at a bazaar.

It came about in this way. After the Great

Court Conjurer had told me to buy and to study

“ Modern Magic,” I saved money carefully until

I had acquired the book. Then I practisedhard.

One day I saw a bill announcing a bazaar at

which a conjurer was to perform. It was not

my fault that I arrived too late to see the

conjuring ; but I was in time to speak with67



68 Woes of a Wizard

the conjurer. He seemed rather tired, andseveral people were sitting round and badgering

him with questions.

I said, “ Good-evening, Professor,`` without

waiting for an introduction ; and informed him

with much cheerfulness that I knew all about

conjuring, and I could palm.“Yes?” said the Professor wearily.

“ Yes," I replied, a happy smile illuminating

my young and silly face. With that I attempted

to palm a halfpenny. It dropped with a horrible

clatter on the floor.

“ You want a little more practice,” said the

Professor. He seemed much more tired than

when I first spoke to him.

I slunk away ; but when I reached my house

I took that halfpenny out again and practised

for many hours.About three weeks afterwards another bazaar

was being held in the neighbourhood. I went

to the secretary, and, with the confidence of

youth, offered my services as a conjurer. They

were accepted so readily that I felt bound to

explain that I had had very little experience.“ Oh, that's all right,” said the secretary ; “ the

fact is Professor ` A--------’ was scorning. But I’ve

just heard from him that he’s ill, and won’t be

able to appear, He’s an awfully good sort, and

will lend you anything you want, and give you



The Lady Who would not Vanish 69

any assistance in his power— I’m sure. Go to

him and say I sent you.”

Now Professor `A--------’ was the very conjurer

who had seen me, but three weeks before, bungling

with a halfpenny! I therefore felt some mis-

givings in going to him ; but from the happy

smile that came over his face when I told himthat I was going to conjure in public, I concluded

that my performance would at least be amusing.

However, when he saw that I was deadly in

earnest—and I had learnt a great deal during the

three weeks— he was very kind, and helped me

to make my performance a success. On the dayof the bazaar I caused all my relations and friends

to be present in large numbers. My happiness

was not perfect, because I could not be sure

whether the secretary’s great glee was due to the

brilliancy of my performance, or to the fact thatI had made about thirty people pay for admission

two or three times during the day. At the close

of the bazaar he congratulated me on “ the ex-

cellent attendances” I had secured, and I was

equally uncertain as to whether he wished to

compliment me on my conjuring, or on my abilityas an “agent in advance.”

To my great joy I discovered, during the day,

that Professor Hoffmann had been present at one

of my performances, and I had heard that he had

said I should make a conjurer one day. At this



72 Woes of a Wizard

Then they told each other what I had said. I

did the vanishing trick very quickly then — with

an impudent youth, by name David Devant.

I began to think that my efforts to do the

Vanishing Lady Trick would never be successful

when one day I came across the two ladies I

wanted. They were dressed alike, their faceswere very much alike, and they were of the same

height. I was so struck with their appearance

that I followed them— discreetly —and eventually

saw them go into a dressmaker’s shop. The

next thing was to get an introduction to the

ladies. But how ? I could find no one whoknew them. In order not to lose sight of them I

met them regularly every morning as they were

going to business, and I hoped —oh, how I

hoped !— that one of them would be attacked by

a dog, or nearly run over by a ’bus, so that I

might then rescue her and earn her lasting

gratitude, and engage her for my Vanishing

Lady Trick, till at the same time. A friend, to

whom I had confided my hopes, offered to bring

his dog one morning, and to make him bark

savagely just as the two young ladies turned thecorner.

I had almost decided to close with this offer;

but another friend, who, I afterwards found,

had been bitten by the aforesaid dog, told me

that if I attempted any rescue work when that




dog was on the scene, one of two things would

inevitably happen. Either I should be bitten badly myself, or one of the two ladies would be bitten in such a way that her likeness to herfriend would be effectually and permanentlydestroyed. Either way, I should still be unable

to do my Vanishing Lady Trick ; so I had tothink of a simpler plan of obtaining the intro-duction I needed.

At last there came a time when I could waitno longer. All the apparatus was ready, and Iwas determined that I would do the Vanishing

Lady Trick that week. My plan was quitesimple. Not being able to get an introductionin the usual way, I resolved to introduce myself.I therefore walked up to the two ladies, raisedmy hat, and said very politely :

“ Pardon me— er —good morning. Would youmind being vanishing ladies ? ”

(I don’t suppose any one will believe it, butthis is absolutely and entirely true.)

I cannot describe properly what happenednext. The two ladies jumped on one side, and

were evidently going to run away. I thereforeassured them hurriedly that it was for a trick,and they would be paid. I had selected them because of their charming presence, and I re-gretted not having been introduced.

Slowly it dawned on the two ladies that I was




the hall by secret ways objected to that part

of her work. She had discovered her importance,

and she wanted it to be known that she was

the Real Vanishing Lady.

My difficulties were considerably increased, at

times, by my own friends. They would come

to the performance, and then send messages tome, asking for an introduction to the Vanishing

Lady; and did I think I could induce her to

come with me to their house to supper ? I

dreaded having those messages. The outcome

of them always was that I had to decide which

of the two Vanishing Ladies I should takewith me. As to my being able to “ induce ”

the Vanishing Lady to come to supper, the

trouble always was to induce her to stay away,

and go home quietly. Sometimes we would be

asked to dances together; then my troubleswould be greater than usual, for a dance was

naturally more attractive than a supper. Finally

I had to make an agreement, that if one Vanish-

ing Lady went to a dance the other Vanishing

Lady should go to two suppers—on two different

evenings of course.My method of presenting this trick was ex-

tremely simple. The Vanishing Lady would

walk from the stage down into the hall, in order

that the audience might see that she was not

an automaton. Then she would return to the



76 Woes of a Wizard

stage and sit down on a small cane chair placed

on an ordinary kitchen-table. I would cover

her for a moment with a cloth, pull it off quickly,

and she would be gone. After that, I usually

said :

“ Where are you ? Where are you ? ”

The Vanishing Lady then appeared in thegallery, and exclaimed :

“ I am here—in the gallery.”

One night something went wrong. I pulled

the cloth off and the Vanishing Lady had not

vanished ! At the same time, the other Vanish

ing Lady in the gallery went on with her partof the performance, and sung out in a small

squeaky voice, which I shall never forget —

“ I am here—in the gallery.”

Then the curtain was dropped, and the band

kindly began to play. I discovered afterwardsthat the mishap was not due to any fault in the

mechanism of my apparatus. The lady that

ought to have vanished was cross, because the

other vanishing lady had eaten the greater part

of a box of their chocolates that had been sent

round to the dressing-room by an unknownadmirer. Neither of them ever knew which

one was “ the ” Vanishing Lady, and so they used

to squabble about the presents that were con

stantly being sent to that mysterious individual.

One gentleman wrote to me to say that the




Vanishing Lady’s beauty and charming manners

exercised a wonderful and indescribable spelt

over him. Would I introduce him ? Both

Vanishing Ladies managed to get hold of that

note, and they then argued the question as to

which of the two was beautiful and had charming

manners, I settled the matter by telling themthat they were both too charming, and I should

be much obliged if they would go and exercise

their “wonderful and indescribable spell ” else-

where.

I have often done the Vanishing Lady Trick

since, but I use only one lady in the performance.The trick is quite as effective as it was in the old

days, and my peace of mind is assured. I am

only afraid that, at times, the trick is too realistic :

for I have frequently been asked privately, by

a male member of the audience, if I cannot vanishsome elderly and angular lady of his acquaintance

as effectually as I have vanished the lady on

the platform.Shocking, isn’t it ?



C H A P T E R V I I

THE MAN WHO MAKES MONEY

HIS is a real woe; and you will please

to understand that I did not have it in

my mind when the photograph which you see

on the cover of this book was taken.It happened many years ago. One night I

was walking home after giving a performance

at a small village schoolroom. The moon was

shining brightly, and I tried to think that I

would not have had a cab if there had been

one, and that I would enjoy the walk. I wastrudging merrily along, and thinking what a

glorious supper I was going to have at the end

of my walk, when I was suddenly brought to a

standstill in the middle of the path.

A man had leaped out of the hedge and was

standing in front of me. It was at once evidentthat he did not mean, to allow me to pass. I

sized him up quickly, saw that he was taller

and much more powerful that I was, and decided

that discretion would be the better part of 78



The Man Who Makes Money 79

valour in this case. For a second or two, which

seemed like hours, he did not speak ; but thenseeing me cast my eyes towards the road he

read my thoughts, and translated them instantly.

“ It’s no use your looking at the road ; you

can't get by me.”

“ What do you want ? ” I asked.

“Well,” he said slowly, “there are a goodmany things I want ; but what I want most just

now, and what I’m going to have, is money. I

have had nothing to eat all day and I’ve got

nowhere to sleep, and I've had no drink. Think

of that, you soft-hearted fur-coated ruffian ! Nothing to drink! Can you imagine what I’ve

suffered by not having anything to drink ?”

The man talked so strangely that I took

courage and looked at him in the face. The

moon shone directly into his eyes, and the bright

beams seemed reflected there. I had never seena man with such eyes ; they sparkled like

diamonds, and they seemed to have at the back

of them a weird phosphorescent light.

I asked the man how much money he wanted

and told him — what was indeed the truth — that

I was very poor, and had very little moneywith me.

“Nonsense!” he screamed. “Nonsense!

They all say that ; but they pay before I’ve

finished with them.” Then he leaned down and



8o Woes of a Wizard

peered into my face. I felt almost hypnotised,

but as he put his face near mine I had enough

presence of mind to show no signs of being

frightened. I do not mind admitting that I

never felt more uncomfortable in my life. He

remained with his face close to mine. His

eyes were almost starting out of their socketsas he glared maliciously at me. Suddenly he

started back, and raising his hands above his

head, burst into a fit of laughter. It was some-

thing like the laughter of a hysterical woman ; the

laughter that makes you shudder. I waited for

a moment to see what could be the cause of hismerriment.

“Why,’’ he shouted; “ I’m in luck. You’re

the man that makes money ! "

“ Not very much,” I pleaded feebly. “ And

not very often.”

“Nonsense!” he shouted. “ They all say

that—all of them ! They all pretend that they

haven’t any money; but they pay before I’ve

finished with them. You — you must have heaps

of money. You’re the man that makes money ! ”

I told him as quietly and as firmly as I couldthat I felt sure he was mistaken, and that in any

case I did not quite understand him.

“Why,” he screamed, “do you lie like this?I saw you making money on Monday. You

made heaps of it, and I wanted to get some,




but they would not let me have it. Don’t you

remember how you made money at the big hallin Wiltenham ?"

I stepped back quickly at the mention of that

word, for I understood, at last, exactly what the

man meant. I had performed on the Monday

of that week at Wiltenham Asylum, and one

of my tricks was catching money, invisibly, in

a hat. I realised in a moment that the man

standing in front of me, and glaring down at

my face, was an escaped lunatic. Remembering

what I had often been told by doctors at

asylums—that one must never make a patientexcited —and realising also that I was in some

danger of being seriously injured, I began to

soothe the man as well as I could.

“ Oh,” said I, “I remember you now quite

well. I shall be most happy to oblige you;

but don't you think that if I begin to makemoney here, somebody else will see us perhaps,

and then they will want some too, and there

won't be so much for you.”

I was hoping that by this simple ruse I

might be able to induce the man to walk with

me along the road, and so to the next village.

He seemed to be considering the matter for

a moment, but then replied very excitedly :

“ No! no! no! We shan’t be caught here,

if you do it very quickly. Make lots of money,

6



82 Woes of a Wizard

fill your hat full, and then give it to me. Look

at that bright shower of diamonds over thattree. Can’t you get some of those too ?’’

The moon had gone behind the cloud while

he had been speaking, and the stars shone out

brilliantly. It was to the stars that he pointed

when he asked me to get him some diamonds.I told him that I would do my best, and I

began to take off my gloves. He was eager

for me to begin at once, and kept on calling

on me to lose no time, because some one might

come along the road and then it would be too

late. If I had had any doubt as to what Iought to do, that doubt was dispelled when

the moon shone out again on to his face. It

was distorted with passion, and I turned away

sick with fear.

“ Look here,” he said, “ begin at once—at

once ; do you hear ? I’m going to sit down ; I’mtired. I’ve been walking about all day and have

had nothing to eat. Begin at once and make

me lots of money, and then give it to me and

I'll go; but if you don’t make plenty, and if

you don’t give it to me, then,” he said, with a

childish chuckle, “you shall go into that nice

little round room all to yourself.”

I knew that he referred to a padded cell.

Never before in my life had I conjured under

such strange conditions. The man sat on a




stile and laughed with joy directly I began. I

suppose most people have seen the trick per-formed. The conjurer holds up a silk hat with

his left hand, catches money invisibly in the

air with his right hand, throws the money

invisibly at the hat, and it is heard to fall inside.

At any time the conjurer’s hands are seen to be empty; but when he has finished, a good

pile of coins is in the hat. Every time the

man heard the chink of money, he dapped his

hands. Certainly I had never had a more

appreciative audience.

I was careful not to do the trick too quickly,and there seemed to be no reason why I should

hurry; because directly the madman saw me

begin his manner changed. He became more

quiet ; and perhaps if any one had come along

then, they would have said that a conjurer who

could perform on a cold night, in the open air,

was more likely to be insane than the man

who was watching him. After the first few

minutes I told him that my arms were getting

a little tired, and that I should like to have a

rest for a minute or two.“ Not for long, not for long.” he shouted.

And very soon I had to begin again.

“ Wait a minute,” he said. “ Let’s see how

much you’ve got.” I turned the hat towards

him and shook up the coins.



84 Woes of a Wizard

“ All right,” he said, “ you'll do. Keep on

long enough and I shall be able to get to New

York after all.”

I do not know how long 1 continued to do the

invisible mint trick. It seemed to me to be

the longest performance I had ever given.

The moon was still shining brightly then, andmy audience and myself were visible two miles

away. My arms were getting very tired, and

I hardly knew how to go on. I was trying to

think how I should tell my audience that I had

not made quite so many half-crowns as he

had heard fall into the hat.At last I thought of a way out of the difficulty.

I made up my mind that I would gather up the

coins and throw them to him ; and then, while he

was picking them up, I would run as hard as

I could down the road. I was just debating

in my mind as to when the best time would be

to do this, when, to my joy, I heard some

footsteps, and presently, in the distance, I saw

two men walking along the road. Both the

men had long sticks, and they were prodding

the bushes and hedges as they went along. Iguessed at once that they were keepers—or

rather attendants, as the keepers at an asylum

like to be called. I shall never forget their

startled look of surprise when they saw me

standing on the side of the road and doing the




Money Catching Trick at three o’clock that

morning.

They realised at once that they had found

their man, and that they would have some little

difficulty in getting near him without being seen,

They motioned to me to continue my perform-

ance, and then they retraced their steps, walkedthrough the hedge, and so approached my

audience from the back.

It was an exciting time for me. I had to keep

the attention of that madman fixed on what I

was doing. Had I wavered once, or shown any

sign of the anxiety I was going through, hewould have turned his head and might then have

seen his pursuers. I closed my eyes and kept

on doing the trick mechanically ; and while my

eyes were thus closed I was suddenly startled by

a yell of rage. The man before whom I had

been performing was on his back on the field,

and a pair of handcuffs, that shone like silver in

the bright moonlight, were round his wrists.

He kicked and struggled, but all to no purpose.

His legs were bound, and one of the attendants

remained with him. The other went to theasylum, and returned in about an hour and a

half with a doctor and a conveyance. I had

been asked whether I would remain with the one

attendant while the other was away.

When the madman was safely inside the



86 Woes of a Wizard

carriage with the two attendants and the doctor,

I was pressed to join them. I said that I

should prefer to ride with the driver.

I have often done that trick since then ; but I

can never do it, or think of it, without recalling the

awful face of that one man who remembered me

simply as “the man who makes money.”



CHAPTER VIII

SOME QUEER REQUESTS

HILDREN always ask me to do the most

strange things ; in fact, if I could do half

what the average child thinks I can do, I should

be a happy man. Often as I am leaving achildren’s party, two or three youngsters will way-

lay me in the hall and one of them will beg me

to turn her into a rabbit, while another brings

me a toy horse and beseeches me to endow it

with life.

But not even children have ever asked me todo a trick that one lady requested me to per-

form at a charity entertainment. There were

about three hundred boys and girls, and I was

asked to produce three hundred threepenny pieces

and present one to each girl and boy. It wasrather a tall order, and you will see why, if you

take three hundred threepenny pieces and put

them all on the table at once. However, I

did it. I will not tell you how I did it, because

I may have to do it again ; but I don't mind

87



88 Woes of a Wizard

letting you into this secret. I thought that therequest was so unreasonable that, instead of pass-

ing the threepenny pieces round, I handed each

one separately myself. In this way at least half

an hour of my one hour’s entertainment slipped

by ; so the lady who engaged me really did not

get quite such good value for her money as shehad expected. Still, she was quite pleased.

On another occasion I was asked to produce

a lot of small buttonholes for each member of the

audience, and then a huge bouquet for a newly

married bride who was present. I told the lady

that I had not brought any flowers with me ; and

she said : Oh, but I thought you were a

conjurer, and could make them magically.” I

believe that is one of the best testimonials I everhad in my life.

Once, when I was quite a young man, I wasasked if I could appear at a Primrose League

meeting, and, in the course of one of my tricks,

produce a large quantity of primroses. I replied

— I was very young then— that any such little

trifle as a basket or two of primroses could be

easily manipulated by a conjurer who knew his business.

On the night in question I had the primroses

arranged all nicely in a paper bag. First of all

I had arranged to produce a large flag with the

letters of the Lodge and “P.L.” in large letters



Some Queer Requests 89

underneath. I had produced this flag, and was

waving it about to terrific applause, when some-

thing went wrong with the paper bag in which

my wet primroses were reposing. I struggled

hard to produce them correctly, but they insisted

on making their appearance prematurely, and

for the rest of the evening I shed primroses asI walked about the hall.

My friends came to me and told me that it

was the best trick that I had ever done. I

assured them that I had made a mistake, and

bungled it ; but they said that it was much more

of a success than were the tricks which I didnot bungle. I may add that the flag I used

on that occasion was painted by myself. I had

stolen a large white silk handkerchief belonging

to a near relative of mine. All the colours came

out in the wash, but the letters remained there ;and so whenever the owner of the handkerchief

wore it, he went about with “P.L.” on the back

of his neck.

I was once sent for by a grocer. I could not

understand what the grocer wanted to see me

about, unless it was that I owed him money.When I got to the shop he took me mysteriously

on one side, and told me that he felt sure that

he had been swindled by a man who had come

in and “rung the changes” on him. I asked him

what he wanted me to do, and he said that he



90 Woes of a Wizard

had heard that I was a conjurer, and he wanted

me to stay behind the counter and play tricks

on that man, when he called again. I did not

accede to his request.

Another strange request I once had, camefrom a lady in reference to her son, who had

assisted me, in going on the stage, on the previousafternoon. She said that her son and she had

enjoyed the performance very much ; but she

thought it a great pity that I had asked her

son to tell a lie about the watch. Those of you

who have seen me do my watch trick, will

know that I ask a boy to drop a watch in a paper bag. As a matter of fact the boy does

drop the watch into the paper bag, and he can

feel that the watch is there the whole time.

I had instructed this lady’s son to drop the watch

in the bag, and had asked him to say that it

was there ; I had not told a lie or asked himto tell a lie. Therefore, in saying that the

watch was not in the bag when it was there,

and in telling his mother that I had told him

to say what was not true, that boy had lied.

Sometimes a conjurer realises that this is a

hard world.

One of the quaintest engagements I ever had,

was to appear at a pantomime played by amateur

actors and actresses. I can say, without laying

myself open to the charge of being conceited,




that the performers on the stage were much

more interested in my conjuring than they were

in their own parts. I was dressed up as the

wicked magician in “ Aladdin’s Lamp,” and I

performed for three quarters of an hour while

the action of the pantomime was delayed. At

the end of my performance I had as muchgenuine applause from the people on the stage

as I had from the people in front, and Aladdin

himself came forward and begged me to give

him an encore.

Some little time afterwards the same company

were going to play the pantomime elsewhere; but they did not engage me. I heard afterwards

that some of the people who went, thought they

had been defrauded of their money because I

was not there. You may think that I am very

conceited in telling you this ; but I am not. Isay it only to show how very bad the amateurs

were.

One of the most curious requests I ever had

made to me, was put by a landlady, in a small

provincial town. She knew, of course, that I

was connected with the company performing atthe Town Hall, but she had not realised until

after the first night that I was the man who

did the conjuring tricks. When I got home

that night I thought she seemed rather flurried,

especially when she brought in the supper. At



92 Woes of a Wizard

last she said she hoped I would excuse her ; but

since seeing me vanish people and things she

felt rather nervous, and would I mind being very

careful with the china ornaments on the mantel-

piece, because they were wedding presents?

I do not think I succeeded in making the old

lady believe that I was not going to practiseconjuring tricks with her china ornaments, for

she kept on coming into the room, in the course

of the evening, with the feeblest excuses; on

purpose, so it seemed to me, to be quite sure

that her belongings were still safe. At one

time she thought she smelt something burning.Was the lamp quite right ? Had I rung tor

anything? Should I like anything else? What

time did I want my shaving water in the morn-

ing? What time should I like breakfast, and

did I prefer tea or coffee ? Each one of thosequestions was put on a separate visit, and at

last, in despair, I told her that what I wanted

most on earth was to be allowed to smoke a

cigar in peace. She left me very reluctantly

and I rather fancy that she waited outside the

door expecting every moment to hear me dropthe china dog, or the stuffed bird under the

glass shade. However, on the following morn-

ing she seemed quite cheerful again, and I

supposed that as she had found that I could

pass one evening in the place without breaking




up her happy home, I might be trusted to remain

there for the rest of the week.One often meets curious landladies when

touring round the country. Of course, the

lodgings that one goes to are always booked

beforehand, and the landladies are always ac

customed to theatrical and professional people.Some weird stories are related of the way in

which actors have taken their revenge on land

ladies who have been rather too anxious to get

rich quickly, at the actor’s expense. One actor,

who had been charged extra for lights, boots,

window cleaning, cruets, kitchen fire and attendance, determined that the landlady should have

cause to regret her misdeeds.

I do not know whether this story is true,

probably it is not, and I rather fancy it has

been told before somewhere; but it is reported

that this actor took his revenge by nailing a

fresh herring underneath the table. In the course

of a few days the fresh herring became no

longer fresh. Consequently, when people went

there to take the rooms, the first thing they

did was to remark on the curious smell therewas in the place. The rooms were never taken.

The landlady could not understand where the

smell came from. She “ spring-cleaned ” the

room. She had the boards taken up in the

hope of finding a dead rat or a mouse, and



94 Woes of a Wizard

she called in the landlord and abused him for

not seeing to the drains. The landlord, whoknew quite well that the drainage system was

imperfect, and that if he was not very careful

the local authority would be down on him, agreed

that the landlady’s demands were just, and had

fresh pipes and things put in at the cost ofabout twenty-five pounds. But still the room

retained its strange scent. At last, one day, one

of the landlady’s children was playing in the

sitting-room—which no one would ever rent—

and the youngster toddled under the table, and

screamed apparently at nothing. The landladyrushed to see what was the matter. . . . But

I have no wish to harrow your feelings with

further details.

Theatrical landladies are not always active in

attending to the wants of their victims, I know

a young actor who became so exasperated witha landlady who refused to answer the bell, unless

she happened to be passing his room, that one

day he walked from the sitting-room to his bed

room and pulled at the bells as hard as he could

for five minutes. He was just beginning torealise that bell-pulling is an excellent exercise,

and that he had had nearly enough for that

day, when the landlady sauntered in.

“Did you want anything, sir?”

“Of course. I rang. I’ve been ringing




for the last five minutes. Didn’t you hear

me ? ”“ Hear you ? Hear you indeed ? Me ’usband

and I could hardly ’ear ourselves speak for the

noise. We wondered what was the matter!"

Another landlady story. This perhaps has no

place in a chapter entitled “ Queer Requests,”

and yet the landlady, who is the heroine of the

story, would tell you that theactor, who is

the other figure in the story, certainly put a

very queer request to her. It was simply this :

he asked her, as a favour, not to steal his sugar,

jam, and butter. These things were kept ina cupboard in the sitting-room. The landladywas very indignant, and protested that she never

took anything in her life, and that she was

not likely to take that man’s butter, because

she did not like it ; and as to his jam, well,

she never ate jam.Two days went by, and, though the actor felt

certain that he was being robbed, he could

not fix upon a way of trapping the land

lady. But at last he invented this trick ; andif you are staying in lodgings, and think that

the landlady is robbing you, you may find it

useful. He caught three flies, and he put one

in the butter-dish, one in the jam-jar, and one

in the sugar-basin. He put a lid on each of

these things, and so imprisoned the unfortunate



CHAPTER IXCONFEDERATES AND MESMERISTS

I CAN imagine that I can hear some of my

very candid friends sighing as they read the

title of this chapter, and saying to themselves :

“ Now we shall hear some of the fine old crusted

yarns about confederates, that have been told

about every conjurer of any note. Devant will

father some of those anecdotes, and will try and

make us believe that he has had the experiences

himself.”Let me undeceive and disappoint these candid

friends at once. I am not going to tell you any

old yarns. I merely want to have my say about

confederates and mesmerists.

I have said elsewhere in this book that I do

not employ confederates. I repeat that state-ment now because I do not want you to forget

it, and because I am well aware that the majority

of people who think at all about conjuring tricks,

as performed on the stage, say to themselves :

“Yes, that's all very well, but you could see that97

7



98 Woes of a Wizard

the man who went on to the stage is used to it.

He’s a confederate, of course.”

I always do my best to prevent people from

coming to that conclusion about our perform-

ance, but I know I do not always succeed. My

usual plan, when I require the assistance of

some member of the audience on the stage, isto ask for a man who is with friends, so that

every one in the audience may see that the man

is known to other people. I once made this

request to an audience, but no one came forward.

“ I particularly don’t want any man to come

up who is by himself,” I said. “ I want a manwho is one of a party of friends — the more the

merrier.”

At last, after a few moments’ waiting, a man

slouched out of his seat at the back of the hall,

and came towards the stage.

“ I ain’t with friends,” he said, jerking his

thumb to the back of the hall, “ they’re only my

four kids and the old woman; but if they’lldo------”

No one heard the rest of the sentence because

the audience laughed. That man unwittinglydid me a bad turn. He meant well, but his little

speech spoiled him. The audience had an idea

that he was a member of the company, “ a con-

federate, of course,” and that it was part of his

business to be a kind of clown. They were very



Confederates and Mesmerists 99

disappointed, because he was exceptionally stupid ;

and of all the woes that a wizard has to put upwith, a stupid assistant is the worst!

Some audiences are very easily pleased. Theywill applaud enthusiastically at any little allusionto their town in the course of a trick ; and if I can

persuade them that I am really in a fix, and thata trick has gone wrong, they become almosthysterical with delight. I find that it does notalways pay to introduce politics into my patter.It does not at all follow, because I find myself infront of what I consider to be an exceptionally

bright and intelligent audience, that I shall bedoing right in making jokes about Mr. ----------- , but perhaps I had better get back to my subject—confederates.

A lady, whom I knew slightly, came to meonce after a performance, and said :

``It’s all very well for you to say on the stagethat you don’t employ confederates, but you’vegiven yourself away— in this town at any rate.”

I told her what was really the truth, that I wasvery sorry to hear it, and that I would see that

such a thing did not occur again.“I can’t make out why a (several nice ad

jectives which my modesty compels me to leaveout) man like you did not see it before. Hereyou are, with bills posted all over the townannouncing that you carry a company of twenty-



100 Woes of a Wizard

six persons, and yet, if you count everybody up

who appears on the stage and in the orchestra,and at the doors, you can’t show that you have

a company of twenty-six. Why give yourself

away by announcing that you have a company

of twenty-six, and then showing less than that

number of persons ? Either you have not acompany of twenty-six — in which case your bills

are a fraud, — or else the company of twenty-six

is made up of confederates. Now, confess I've

caught you! ”

I was sorry to have to discourage this young

lady, because it was quite evident that she hadtaken a good deal of interest in the performances

of Maskelyne and Cooke’s Mysteries, and I like

everyone to do that. It pays so nicely when

they do. However, even at the risk of dis

appointing the lady, I had to tell her that there

was still another clue to the mystery about the

bills and the number of people in the company,

and that the secret of the whole matter was

that — clever as we were, are, and mean to be — we

cannot get on very well without money-takers, and

carpenters, and machinists, and advance agents,and a business manager. As a matter of fact,

the company of Maskelyne and Cooke’s Mysteries

is often larger than it is advertised to be.

I have said that I will not introduce any old

yarns about confederates, and I will keep to




my word, but I should just like to say, beforeI get on to the second woe of this chapter, that

anyone can do conjuring tricks by employing

good confederates. A conjurer who is con

stantly performing publicly in small towns — as

we often do — would find confederates rather

more bother than they were worth. In a smalltown everybody knows everybody else, and so,

if, when the conjurer asked fur someone from

the audience to come up to the stage, Mr.

Confederate stepped forward, the majority of

people would see at once that he was a stranger

to the town, and they would naturally jump to

the conclusion that he was in league with the

conjurer.

There is one more reason why we do not

use confederates. They are old-fashioned, and

a conjurer who wishes to put a good distance between himself and the bankruptcy court must

not be old-fashioned. Improvements in tricks,

and in the method of doing tricks, are always

being thought out, and the conjurer who is not

one of the thinkers is apt to get considerably

more time for thinking than he requires.Having shown you how difficult it is to employ

confederates without running the risk of exciting

people's suspicions, I will now proceed to let you

into a few secrets, showing how confederates

can be easily employed in such a way that the




audience do not become suspicious. This bringsme to the second woe of my chapter —mesmerists.

Mesmerists are real woes to conjurers, and you

will see why they are if you read to the end

of this chapter.

Perhaps I may as well let the cat out of the

bag at once. Well, then, there is this difference between a mesmerist — or rather, a man who

professes to give a mesmeric performance — and

a conjurer. A conjurer tells his audience, by

proclaiming that he is a conjurer, that he is

going to show them something wonderful, butsomething which can be explained by the words

“sleight-of-hand” or “illusion.” In short, the

conjurer says, in effect : “ I am going to humbug

you.” The mesmerist proceeds on different

lines. He gives you to understand that he

can mesmerise anyone, and that by employinghypnotic influence he can control the actions of

other people, and make them obey his wishes.

The mesmerist explains his performance by the

one word science, and he would be. righteously

indignant if you suggested that he was a humbug,

and that his entertainment was a piece of trickery

from beginning to end —which is precisely what

it is.

I know what you are going to say. You

have seen So-and-So and So-and-So, and you

are quite certain that their performances were




genuine, because you saw men under their in-

fluence put lighted cigar ends on their barearms, and run needles into their cheeks, and

thread cotton through their tongues. “ Besides,”

you say to yourself, “Mr. So-and-So asked

anyone to come up from the audience to

be mesmerised, and several men of our owntown went up to the stage and let him send

them off and then they did all sorts of silly

things.”

I am sorry to have to disillusionise you ; but

that was all humbug, and I will now show you

how it was all done.In the first place, a man who is going to

give a series of mesmeric performances through

out the country, has to take with him several

men, trained for the work, who are called

mediums. They are never really hypnotised;

it is not necessary that they should be, because

these men are good actors, and they probably

make more sacrifices for their work than any

other members of the profession. These men

have taught themselves how to endure pain

without flinching. A lighted cigar laid on their bare arm causes them no inconvenience. They

have got used to it. A needle stuck into the

arm does not cause so much pain as you would

imagine. These men have a knack of pinching

up a little piece of the arm into which the




experiment two nights running, but tine people

might get a little suspicious if they heard after-

wards that he had been anxious to put a lighted

cigar on his arm for three nights in succession.

In addition to these ``mediums in advance,”

the mesmerist will have two or three similar

men in his company, but always travellingseparately. It is understood that any two

mediums who are seen talking to each other,

or travelling with each other, or lodging together,

will be instantly dismissed. There is always

a temptation for the mediums to lodge under the

same roof, because by so doing they get theirlodgings more cheaply than if they go to differenthouses.

The mesmerist who is really a good showman

recognises, however, that there are occasions

when he must put forth better efforts to hoodwink

the public. There are times when, to establish

complete confidence in his show, he must secure

confederates in the town in which he is performing,

and he must get them, and engage them, and

pay them, and do all this in such a way that

it will not be in the power of anyone of theseconfederates to turn round afterwards and say:

“That man bribed me to come on to the stage

and deceive the public.”

It will be seen that the mesmerist has a difficult

task before him. This is how he gets through it.




merist to the medium. If the loafer is absolutely

devoid of common sense, he will move his arm

when the mesmerist “ suggests ” that he cannot

move it, and, of course, in that case, the man

is hopeless and is dismissed. In most cases,

however, the loafer quickly realises that by doing

what the mesmerist “suggests” he shall dounder the imaginary hypnotic influence, he will

get an engagement to appear that evening for

half a crown.

That is exactly how it is done, and you will

sec that the loafer-medium cannot give the show

away afterwards. He cannot say that the

mesmerist did not experiment with him, and

did not succeed in mesmerising him. If he

confesses that he was shamming at the trial

by the mesmerist, then the loafer-medium stands

confessed to having practised a fraud on themesmerist, by pretending to be mesmerised when

he was not in that state.

Occasionally the regular mediums quarrel with

the mesmerist— not often, because the pay is

good and the work light — and then perhaps they

will try and take their revenge on the mesmerist by giving him away in the very town in which

he is performing. The gullibility of the public

is so great, however, that they have great

difficulty in doing this. A professional medium

will go to a public-house, tell the landlord his




story, and to prove that it is true, and that

he can stand the pain of having a lighted cigar

laid on his arm and needles stuck into his calf,

he will submit to those experiments there and

then. Perhaps the landlord will allow the

medium to entertain his customers by showing

the experiment. Do you know what happensthen ? If you think that the mesmerist is given

away, and that he has to fly from the town in

order to prevent himself from being mobbed

by the people, you are very much mistaken.

The medium who has quarrelled with his

employer does not get his revenge so easily, for

when he has told his story in the public-house,

every member of his little audience will

say :

“ Ah, that’s all very well for you to do those

things now; but you were mesmerised rightenough when we saw you at the hall last

night.”

The public refuse to be enlightened, even when

the right man is there to do the work. I hope

I may be successful where the professional

medium fails.I have been assured by a doctor that the pain

of having needles stuck into one’s arm is not

nearly so acute as one would imagine ; in fact,

that directly the skin is pierced very little pain

is felt, especially if the needles are very sharp




and are inserted—as they always are—very

quickly.I can scarcely hope that the following story

will be believed, but it is absolutely true in all

its details, and I could, if necessary, produce one

of the chief actors in it. I tell it here to show

what an extraordinary amount of pain the regular

mediums of the travelling mesmerist can endure

without flinching.

A certain mesmerist had elaborated his per-

formance very cleverly. He had one medium

who could speak very well. This medium was

an educated man, an old 'Varsity man, and heis now one of our most successful comedians.

As a medium, he found an easy way of earning

a living. The mesmerist would suggest— before

he put him under the influence — that he should

make a speech on — say, the Home Rule Bill.

Of course the medium would hesitate, and stutterout that he did not take any interest in politics.

Then the mesmerist would do his sham passes,

and would suggest to the medium that now he

could speak very well on the Home Rule Bill,

and the medium would forthwith deliver an im-

passioned speech.

By having this man who could speak well,

and a juggler who was not quite good enough

for a public performer, and a few acrobats, this

mesmerist could give a marvellous performance.




One day, however, there was an accident on the

stage with the acrobats. They used to finishthe performance by making a pyramid on the

stage. On the occasion to which I refer, one

of the men fell and hurt himself badly. He

yelled with the pain. The mesmerist grasped

the situation at once, and whispered to him :

“Be quiet, and there’s five pounds for you

after the show, and I’ll look after you and your

family, if you have to go into the hospital.”

To the audience the mesmerist said :

“ Ladies and gentlemen, there has been a

slight accident; I shall now be able to give you practical proof of the value of hypnotic influence.

This man has hurt himself, and you heard him

shriek with the pain, which I know must have

been very real. I have just put him once more

under my influence ” — here the mesmerist made

a few more passes—“and he will assure youthat he feels nothing. You feel nothing ? ”

“ Nothing at all,” said the medium with a

smile.

“ But, ladies and gentlemen,” continued the

mesmerist, “ I cannot keep this on very long

now. It would not be fair to the man. He is

going to the hospital, and if you want the testi-

mony of the doctors there to the value of hypnotic

influence, I have no doubt that they will be able

to give it.”




The curtain was lowered, and crowds of people

flocked to the local hospital. By this time themesmerist had telephoned to every doctor in the

neighbourhood, and there was quite a procession

of carriages on the road to the hospital. To

cut a long story short, the injured man — he had

broken his leg—was undressed and put to bed,

and his leg was set. The man was supposed

to be under the influence of the mesmerist all

the time, and he never flinched once the whole

time. All those doctors were taken in by the

mesmerist, and for the rest of his engagement

he did enormous business.Some months afterwards, when business was

not so good, and the injured medium had re-

turned to the company, the mesmerist whispered

to him on the stage one evening L

“ Bill, you couldn’t manage to break your

blooming leg again, could you? I’d make itworth your while. Same terms as before.”

At that time Bill was prosperous and he did

not want to break his leg, and so the mesmerist

had to be content without that advertisement.

Bill is not so prosperous now, but I do not think

that anything would tempt him to go through

such a performance again. When he told me

the story, he said that he could nearly cry at the

very thought of the pain he put up with for five

pounds and his pay, and a month in the hospital.




I trust that you will now see why I have

included mesmerists in the “Woes of a Wizard.”

The wizard tells you that he is a trickster, and

that he is going to take you in with his tricks.

The mesmerist professes to do his hypnotic

experiments scientifically, and from the moment

he steps on to the stage till the moment thecurtain is lowered the mesmerist is a trickster

of the worst kind. He is deceiving the public

while professing to do something else.

I do not like to see the public gulled in this

way ; hence this chapter.



CHAPTER X

A REAL ROMANCE

I HAVE often been asked whether I have

ever performed under trying circumstances.

I do not like to tell the good people who put

that question to me that there is no politeadjective which quite describes some of the

difficulties I have had to contend with. What

do you say, for instance, to doing conjuring

tricks when you are nearly doubled up with

rheumatism ? I have often done that. I re-member, on one occasion, I was announced to

perform at a hydro at Buxton, This was many

years ago. I had been staying in Buxton in

order to try and cure my rheumatism. On the

evening that I was to perform I was thinking that

Buxton, as a cure for rheumatism, was a perfectamateur at the game. I have no doubt that I

should have regretted exceedingly that I had spent

so much good money to no purpose, if I had

happened to have paid my hotel bill.

If you read that last sentence very carefully, you113 8




may discover why I could not cancel my engage-

ment at the hydro; although my rheumatismhad had a good try at making me give up con-

juring for the time. It seemed to me that the

town of Buxton resented the use to which Iwas putting it. It seemed to be saying to me :

“ Look here ; we don’t mind curing your rheuma-

tism, but we don’t do that sort of thing for

nothing. Everybody who comes here pays an

awful lot for the privilege ; why should you try

and make money out of us ? ”

1 have often heard of public performers who

have boasted that they have appeared in public,at times when they would rather have done

anything else, simply — so they have said—

because they did not want “ to disappoint the

public.’' I cannot say that I had any such

regard for the feelings of the public. The only

part of the public that I did not wish todisappoint was my landlord ; and as I imagined

that if I did disappoint him he would not take

his troubles lying down, I decided that I must

go through with the conjuring.

Had I been able to get the money I wanted

in any other way, I would have risked disappoint-

ing the public by not performing before them.

I would cheerfully have left them there in the

hydro, lamenting that their great opportunity for

seeing me was gone, and might never return.



A Real Romance 115

I would have turned my back on the dear public,and would have ignored them altogether ; only, yousee, I wanted the good gold that the kind publicwas going to pay to see me. When I hear ofsome great man — usually an actor or a musician

going on to a stage or platform when he does

not want to, and giving his show just becausehe does not wish “to disappoint the public,”I feel that I must get away in a corner all tomyself, and snigger.

But to return to my hydro. My rheumatismwas so painful that I had to he wheeled to the place in a bath-chair. Unfortunately for me, onedear old lady, who afterwards sat in the frontrow at my performance, saw me get out of the

bath-chair. The lady was deaf, and, therefore,when she thought that she was talking in a

whisper, she was really speaking in the tone ofvoice that you would use if you wanted to frightenthe birds away from your ripe strawberries. Youcould hear that old lady shouting all over theroom, and this is what she thought she waswhispering to the lady on her right :

“ My dear, how does he do it ? ” (I was takingsome eggs out of my mouth.) “ I'm sure he’s ill,and in pain. I saw him get out of a bath-chair.It must hurt him to take all those eggs out ofhis mouth. See what awful faces he’s making.’'

Perhaps some of my readers, who have seen




me do that trick, may remember that when I takethe eggs out of my mouth, I pretend that the

operation is extremely painful. As a matter of

fact the grimaces I make are quite realistic.

Once when I was having a tooth out, I caught

sight of myself in the glass, and every time I do

my egg trick I reproduce the expression I sawon my face, when the dentist was attacking me.

The dear old lady at the hydro was quite right.

I was hurting myself horribly by performing, and

I suppose my expression of pain was too much like

the real thing. As a matter of fact, there wasno deception whatever about it. When I heard

the dear old lady condoling with me, my pain

grew worse, because I knew from experience that

the last thing a public performer may do is to

allow his audience to see that he is not in his

tip-top best form. Once let the public, in frontof you, get the idea that you are performing

simply because they have paid to come in and

see you, and that you do not want to perform,

and you make yourself a failure at once. The

public like to think that your performance amuses

you as much as it does them.

Perhaps it does sometimes. The public also

expects that you shall always be at your best; and

if you are not at your best, the public thinks

that it has been defrauded of part of its money.

I have heard it suggested that the public, in doing



A Real Romance 117

this, are very hard-hearted and exacting. Per

sonally I do not think that they are anything of

the kind. They have paid their money in the

expectation of being entertained ; and if they are

not amused, they have a perfect right to be cross

at having spent their money badly. Whether, in

this case, the entertainer ought conscientiously toreturn the money at the doors, as the public go

out, is a matter so serious that I cannot bear to

think of it. I may add that I have never felt

myself called upon to return any money.

My performance, on the particular night to

which I refer, was an absolute failure. It gotabout that I was ill, and immediately the audience

settled among themselves that I was a wretched

conjurer. I can say, without any hope of

being contradicted, that on that particular night

the audience were quite right. Every time I

worked in a joke the members of the audience

looked at each other, and then the old lady

shouted : “ Shocking ! How does he manage

to keep It up ? I think it’s too bad to expect

him to go on,`` I noticed that the lady showed

no inclination to go herself. Every time I cameon to the platform I could hear her remarking

that I looked worse and worse, and she was sure

I should not last out the evening. I am afraid

I disappointed the old lady.

The performances at the hydro were not




after that, and after that; but that I might call

until I was a grey-headed, doddering old man

and she would not marry me. I shook my

auburn locks— I had a lot of auburn locks then —

crushed my soft felt hat down on my head and

repeated my determination to call on that day

next year.The year went by too quickly. I did not

forget the lady whom I had honoured by asking

to be my wife ; but when the day was fast

approaching when I should have to ask her

for the second time or break my word, I

found that I was absolutely and entirely withoutmoney.

The lady lived at a popular seaside place

some distance from London. I could not borrow

the money for the train fare, because I had always

had a strong objection to getting into debt ; and,

besides, I did not know anyone who would

advance me the sovereign without a better

security than I could offer. At last, in my despair,

I made up my mind what I would do. I stole

away from my home, went to a friend’s house,

and blacked my face with burnt cork. I hadmanaged to scrape enough money together just

to pay for the excursion ticket, but I had realised

that in all probability, in the joy of seeing me

again and hearing me renew my declaration of

love, the young lady would be so overpowered



A Real Romance 121

by her emotion that she would want to go out

and have lunch with me— a large lunch—and

perhaps a drive on the sea-front in the after

noon.

Well, when I had blacked my face I knew that

I should be able to get that extra money, I

did what I had never done before and have neverdone since. I did conjuring tricks in the train

going down ; on the beach when I got there ; and

in the train coming back.It is not easy to do conjuring tricks in a

railway train ; but I seemed to be in luck that

morning, for the train stopped pretty frequently.When it did, I jumped out of one third class

carriage and into another, and in this way I had

several changes of audience during the morning.

I did the cup-and-balls trick. I suppose that I

must have got somewhat careless towards theend of the morning, because I know that once

the train stopped suddenly and jerked me and

my little table and my tricks all over the

carriage.

A child who saw a ball disappear under the

seat thought it was part of the programme,and insisted on my getting the ball back again

without getting under the seat myself. I saw

an opportunity here of doing a good trick. I

rolled up my sleeve, put my hand under the

seat to get the ball, at the same time telling the




child that she had made a mistake, and had not

seen a ball roll there. She contradicted me, and

I was about to show her that she had been

mistaken, and that what she had really seen was

a young rabbit, when I felt my arm pounced

upon by a brute of a dog that had been lying

under the seat. It was true that I producedthe rabbit; but it was painfully evident that the

rabbit wished I had produced something else.

The dog took a keen, intelligent interest in

the rest of the performance. I think he ex

pected me to produce a few more rabbits for

him.When I got down to the seaside I went on

to the beach, set up my table, and began to

perform. In the innocence of my young heart

I had not troubled to find out that it was neces

sary to get permission from the town authorities,

before I could perform on the beach. That is

why a policeman moved me on six times in the

first hour, and said that if I did not clear off I

should know what would happen.

By that time I had taken, altogether, about

a sovereign ; and so I thought I might reasonablygo to the young lady once more and repeat my

proposal.

First of all I had to go away in a quiet corner

and wash the burnt cork off my face, and leave

my table and tricks in a cloak-room. Having




that morning, and so I just waited silently while

he fetched his “missus,” She had been washingsomething in the scullery. Her sleeves were

rolled up to her elbow and smelt of soap-suds.

When she saw me she pretended, at first, that

she did not remember me, and then I caught

her in the act of tapping her forehead, and

motioning to her husband. He was kind enough

to suggest that perhaps I would come and have

tea with them ; and he even went so far as to

hint that he knew of a place where some specially

good shrimps were to be bought for a mere

nothing. I don’t think I heard anything else thathe said, because I was thinking of what would

happen if he recognised in me the Christie

Minstrel Conjurer he had moved on on the beach

in the morning. At last I said that they were

very kind, but I had some friends in the town,

and I would go to them and come back andhave tea. The policeman shook me by the

hand warmly, and said that he would be very

pleased to see me again. My fair charmer

also shook me by the hand — and it was very

soapy!

I did not go back there again. When I said

I would, I deliberately and intentionally lied

to the good people. I roamed about on the

beach and caught the heavy cold to which

I have alluded. That is the only lie I have



A Real Romance 125

ever told in my life, and I am very sorry

for it.

Can you imagine that any conjurer has had a

greater disappointment than that which I ex-

perienced when I was the chief figure in this

“ Real Romance ” ?



C H A P T E R X I

A FEW PUPILS

NE morning I was visited by a gentleman

in a great state of excitement, who sent

In his card with the request that he wished to

see me on very particular business. When hecame into the room, he immediately began asking

what were my terms for lessons, and when I

could begin to teach.

“ It’s a very serious case now,” he said, “and

I should like you to begin at once.”

Thinking that the man was slightly mad—

I have often been visited by madmen —I stepped

back a little and asked him what case it was

that was so serious. Then he burst out laughing

and said that, of course, I did not understand.

He went on to explain that it was not he whowanted the lessons; his wife wanted them.

Even then I could not understand why the

case should be so serious. At last he confessed

to me that his wife had seen my performance ;

had come back mystified ; and had not slept

126



A Few Pupils 127

since that day for thinking how some of my

tricks were done.“The fact is, my dear sir,” he said, “ my wife

is suffering from an attack of violent curiosity.

She does not really take an intelligent interest

either in you, or your tricks ; she's simply mad

because she doesn't know the secrets, and thedoctor tells me that during the last week she

has been knocking herself up through the worry

of not being able to satisfy her own curiosity.”

He then asked me whether I would go and

give his wife the lessons.

I gave that lady five or six lessons, but Ido not believe that she ever paid the slightest

attention to them, after the first five minutes.

All she wanted to know was how each trick

was done. Directly I had given her that

information she showed scarcely any interest in

the lesson ; but occasionally she would assureme that the trick could not possibly be done in

the way I said it was done.

On another occasion a man came to me and

said he very much wanted to learn how to do

a few tricks. He said that his wife was a very

great vocalist; his daughters played the piano,

the violin, and recited ; and whenever they went

out he really felt out of it. He said he used

to have to go on the stage and screw the

music-stool up, and open the piano, and shift




the piano whenever they wanted him to, and

generally act as a kind of upper servant. He

thought that if he learnt a few conjuring tricks

he might do something on the stage.

This man really had a good idea of how some

tricks were performed. What he wanted me

to do was to give him a few lessons, so that hemight be absolutely certain of doing the things

properly. He was a middle-aged man, and he

had never before attempted anything of the kind.

The first time I went to his house I noticed

that my arrival caused a great deal of commotion.

My new pupil was a long time in making hisappearance ; and when he burst into the room,

rather hot and flurried, he excused himself for

keeping me waiting by saying that his wife had

wanted to see him on very important business.

During the lesson my pupil's wife came in to

interrupt us three or four times, and at subsequent lessons she never let us alone. I used to

see her and her daughters peeping round the

corners, and through curtains and windows, to

see the pupil receiving his instructions.

I could not help noticing, too, that whenever,

in the course of the lesson, I wanted a sheet of

paper, or a glass, or some lumps of sugar, or a

jug of cold water, or any other trifle like that,

my pupil always seemed to have some little

difficulty in getting what he wanted. He



A Few Pupils 129

generally returned with the particular article I

had asked for in the course of the trick I was

teaching ; but he was always very hot and flurried

when he came back, and always appeared to

have had a long argument with some one. I

could not understand what was the secret of this

little mystery ; but it was soon revealed to me.Just as I was setting out for one lesson, I

received a hastily written letter from my pupil.

He said that he could not look me in the face,

but, at the same time, it was quite impossible for

him to go on having any more lessons. He said

that it was difficult for him to explain ; but thefact of the matter was, he had a wife and

daughters who were of the opinion that he would

never learn to do conjuring tricks without making

a fool of himself, and they had so worried him

not to have lessons, and to give up all idea of

having lessons, that, at last, simply to get a little

peace in his house, he had decided to comply

with their requests. Therefore, he could not

have any more lessons, and he was very sorry,

and hoped I would understand. From what I

saw of that pupil I am inclined to think that hewould have made a very good conjurer. As to

his qualities as a married man I will be discreetly

silent. He will probably read this book ; in

which case I hope he will forgive me for relating

this story.

9




The smartest pupil I ever had was a doctor,

who came to me for some finishing lessons. I

had impressed on him the importance of making

all the movements with his hands as naturally as

possible, and he thanked me for that good advice.

When I was on my way to another engagement,

I put my fingers into my waistcoat pocket totake out some money for a cab fare, and found,

to my surprise, that instead of a guinea — which

I should have received from my pupil—I had

only two shillings. My pupil had taken me at

my word ; and when he changed his sovereign, and

substituted the shilling, the movements of hishands had certainly been natural. I ought to

add, in justice to him, that when I got home again

I found a note awaiting me with a cheque for

a sovereign inside it; and I do not think I have

ever given a pupil so much genuine pleasureas I did to that one, by allowing myself to be

caught napping.

Many people come to me and ask me to teach

them one trick. I suggest to them that they

may find themselves in a little difficulty. If they

do the tricks well they will get encored, andif they do not know any other tricks they will

not be able to respond ; while, on the other

hand, if they don’t do the trick well no one will

ever want to see them again. I suggested this

once to a young man who replied that he could



A Few Pupils 131

easily get over that difficulty. If the people

encored him he would do the trick over again.

Perhaps you will not see the point of that joke ;

in which case I may tell you that a good con-

jurer would as soon think of whistling at his

mother-in-law’s funeral, as he would of doing one

trick twice over in the same evening, unless, ofcourse, he adopted quite a new principle for

the second performance.

I once had a very enthusiastic pupil. He

insisted on my experimenting with him in some

very interesting problems in black magic. In

order to carry out our series of illusions, we rehearsed some of them in the garden, and part

of my pupil’s furniture had to be moved from

the house on to the lawn at the back. It was

not until we had got into the middle of a very

interesting rehearsal that we discovered that

every window of the adjoining houses, from

which a view of us could be obtained, was filled

with curious faces. Later on in the afternoon

an agent of the landlord called to see my pupil.

The agent was rather surprised at seeing my

pupil there, and said :“ Oh, you are here, then. They told me you

were moving.”

My pupil assured the agent that the report

was entirely false. It appeared that some

one had been to the landlord and had told




him that my pupil was “shooting the moon”

in broad daylight. The landlord's agent had

expected to find the dining-room table being

carried gingerly over the garden wall, and the

drawing-room chairs hidden away behind a couple

of evergreen bushes. I assured the landlord’s

agent that a conjurer would not be quite sofoolish as to move his household goods by day

light.

Then my pupil chimed in and told the land

lord’s agent that it would be quite easy for a

conjurer to vanish any particular article of

furniture, when he made up his mind to do so.The landlord's agent seemed rather impressed

by this, and entered into a long conversation with

us about some of the principles of conjuring.

When he rose to go, he seemed to be rather in

a hurry, and instead of going back through the

house he went out at the garden gate. At the

same moment we heard a terrific rapping at

the front door of the house, and going in we

discovered two policemen on the door-step.

We then found that the landlord’s agent was

not the landlord’s agent ; that he was the partner in a firm of very clever burglars ; and that

he had been told off to keep us amused in the

large garden at the back of the house, while

his principal partner got into the front of the

house and did the vanishing trick with a large



A Few Pupils 133

quantity of silver. The burglar had been seenleaving the house by the police, and they had

given chase, but had been unable to find him.

My pupil took the matter very philosophically

and said that it served him right for bragging

about the abilities of a conjurer. He also looked

at me in a way that betokened distrust. Ifancy he considered that I ought to have known

that the landlord’s agent was not the landlord’s

agent.

I once got the credit for giving a lesson which

I never gave. As a child I used to be rather

fond of ventriloquism, and I used to amuse thefamily by my attempts at imitating people. One

day a boy came to me and asked me to give him

a lesson in ventriloquism — I was not more than

a boy myself then — and my brother told him that

he should observe the way in which I held mymouth while I made the sound appear to come

from the roof or the cellar.

At that moment a fearful screech was heard,

and then a low moan. Directly this ceased, the

company heard the me-owing of a cat, and they

all said that it was the best imitation of a catthey had ever heard. I encouraged them in

this belief. At last the sound died away, and

they all came round and congratulated me upon

my splendid success, and asked me how I

did it.




I told them that it was quite simple. All theyhad to do was to get a cat and make it me-ow,

and then imitate the sound. No sooner had

I said this than my friends were startled out of

their wits by a fiendish shriek, which they said

was unlike any cat they had ever heard. I told

them that they did not understand cats, and thatthe shriek was quite natural. They replied

that I had been trying to do too much; that

the first imitations were all right; but the second

were no use.

“ There,” they said, as the me-owing started

again, “ that’s more like the real thing.”

My friend went away and thanked me for

the lesson, and said I was the most wonderful

ventriloquist he had ever heard. When they

told him afterwards that the man who had been

to see after the gas had taken up a couple of boards in our dining-room, and that the cat had

somehow jumped down the hole and had been

imprisoned there for twenty-four hours, my pupil

wrote to say that I was an absolute fraud.

Sometimes I think he was right.



CHAPTER XII

MINOR WOES

CONJURER very often has a good deal

to put up with, in the course of his

performance. To begin with the conjurer

always runs a certain risk, when he asks some-

one to assist him by coming on the stage, of

getting a man who tries to be funny at the

conjurer’s expense,

I once had a man who began tapping thestage with his foot directly he arrived upon it.

I had asked him to come up and hold a paper bag ;

but whether it was that he thought I was going

to play a trick on him — a thing I never do on

anyone whom I ask to come on the stage— or

whether it was he was really nervous ; or whetherit was that he was simply trying to be funny

and to amuse his friends in the audience, I never

knew ; but he pointblank refused to do what

I asked him to do, and kept on tapping the

stage with his foot. At last the audience got135




as tired of him as I was, and he had to go

back again.

The man who wants to be funny never gives

the conjurer a chance. Just as you have got

him to do what you want, and have secured the

complete attention of the audience, the man will

look round and pretend to be extremely nervous.Sometimes he will assure you that the watch

really is not in his pocket ; that he has not seen

it ; that he doesn’t want it ; that he hopes you

won’t give it to him. I have only one way

of dealing with men like that. It is hopeless

to continue the entertainment, and so I suggestthat when he has finished entertaining his friends

and the rest of the company I will go on. That

plan usually succeeds.

Then again, the unfortunate conjurer often

finds the audience reluctant to assist him in a

trick. Sometimes I do a trick that necessitates

my going amongst the audience, and asking

ladies if they will write down figures on pieces

of paper. It seems an easy matter. I have

a piece of paper and a pencil in my hand, ready

to offer to the first lady who says that she willwrite three figures on the paper, and yet I often

have the greatest difficulty in persuading a lady

to take the piece of paper and pencil out of my

hand,

The strange part of it is that when one



Minor Woes 137

lady has taken the first piece of paper, and the

first pencil, I never have any difficulty in getting

several ladies to take the remainder of the papers.

It seems to me, in this little matter as in others,

a lady is not happy until someone else has set

the fashion, and then she is only too eager to

follow it.I used to experience a certain amount of

trouble at performances for charitable institutions.

Sometimes I arrived at a hall ready to begin,

and found that the vicar, who had arranged the

entertainment, had considered it necessary that

there should be a short service, both before andafter my entertainment. It always seemed to

me to be a little incongruous to hear conversation

like this :

“ Has he come ? ”

Yes, and he says he’s all ready to begin.”

“ Oh ! ” turnings to the audience in front of him.

“ Children, Mr. Devant has come, so we will

now begin by singing a hymn — the first hymn

on the paper."

At the conclusion of the performance, the vicar

would sometimes begin a little moral sermon, anduse my conjuring tricks as a text. At one time

I used to hear the same sermon from different

men so often that I got quite tired of it. It

used to come out something like this :

“ Now, dear children, you have seen Mr.




Devant perform some marvellous tricks. He

has done things which seem almost impossible;they are mysteries to us. But, my dear children,

there are other mysteries in the world which

are equally inexplicable. There is the mystery

of ----- ” and then would follow a long catalogue

of childish sins.On one occasion the clergyman went one

better than this. He said, speaking of my

entertainment:

“ Now, my dear children, you have seen some

marvellous tricks, so wonderful indeed that they

amount almost to miracles ; but if you would readof something still more wonderful; if you would

read of some real miracles, let me entreat you

to turn to your Bibles."

I am a reverent man, and I thought that that

appeal was not quite in the best of taste.

At the end of some of these charitable perform-

ances the vicar or teacher would get up and

propose a vote of thanks to the conjurer. He

would say:

“ Now, children, you have seen Mr. Devant’s

conjuring entertainment. I am sure it is verygood of Mr. Devant to come all the way down

here from Piccadilly, on purpose to amuse you

for just one hour. The weather is so cold that

I am sure Mr. Devant must have had a most

uncomfortable journey; but we are all exceedingly



Minor Woes 139

grateful to him for coming here, and we hope

to see him again. Now I want you all to

say with me ‘ Thank you very much. Good

night

After that there would be : “ One, two, three—

now! ’’ and then a chorus of squeaky little voices,

all saying : “ Thank you very much. Good-night.”On those occasions I always felt uncommonly

like a hypocrite, because although the weather

may have been cold, and the journey may have

been tiresome, Mr. Devant did not go to the

place entirely because he wished to amuse the

children. There was a certain fee which wasslipped into his hand as he left the hall. Still,

as it pleased these good people to let the children

think that I was so exceedingly generous, it was

not any business of mine to try and destroy

the good opinion they entertained towards me.I always had a nice little speech ready, in which

I told them I was very pleased to come,—which

was quite true; and I hoped I should see

them again,—which was equally true ; and then

I wished them a very good-night.

At some performances of this kind the childrenwere very badly behaved. The moment I had

begun there would be a chorus of “ He’s got

it up his sleeve,” or “ We’ve seen that before,”

or “If he doesn’t take care he’ll drop it.” I

have gone into halls where that has been going




on, and the unfortunate conjurer on the stage

has not been able to make himself heard, I

usually found, when I had to perform before such

children, that I could secure absolute silence by

threatening to stop the entertainment, and to

go away directly anyone of them spoke. Of

course I had not the slightest intention of doinganything of the kind, because, after all, people

do not pay a conjurer to go away. But this

harmless deception always produced the desired

effect.

Sometimes the teachers of the children would

take upon themselves to preserve very strictorder, and would ask me beforehand not to

interfere. Consequently, sometimes, just as I

was getting into the exciting part of the trick

and was about to produce a rabbit out of a silk

handkerchief, the teacher would come forward

and say :

“ Excuse me, do you mind waiting just one

moment ? Thank you. Now then, Johnnie

Blinkings, come here. If you can’t behave

yourself better than that you had better go home.

Stand on the form,”At other times Johnnie Blinkings, or a boy

just like him, would be called up to receive

corporal punishment, and would be returned to

his seat dissolved in tears. Then the teacher

would look round smiling at me and say :



Minor Woes 141

“Thank you, Mr. Devant, now if you would

continue I should be very much obliged.”It used to make the tricks fall rather flat when

they did that.

I have occasionally suffered a few woes at the

hands of my assistant. I remember on one

occasion I was performing the box trick before avery large audience in the Midlands, an audience

composed principally of people who worked in

factories, and who were exceedingly keen on

discovering how the box trick was done. My

assistant had got into the box ; the box was

placed on an ordinary chair; the curtain was pulled in front of it, and I turned to the audience

and explained that I would endeavour to amuse

them with a little experiment in sleight-of-hand

while the man was getting invisibly out of his

box, and vanishing into space. Upon this par

ticular occasion when I returned to the box I

thought it felt unusually heavy. However, it

was too late then to tell the audience that I

was afraid that the man had not vanished. The

cords were undone, the wrapper was taken off,

the box was unlocked, and there was my assistantfast asleep inside. I discovered afterwards that

the man had been dining not wisely but too

well, and that that was why he had fallen asleep.

He never fell asleep in the box again, because

he never had the chance to get inside it.




The remembrance of that mishap with a box

reminds me of another that I once had to endure.I related the story in the last Christmas number

of To-day and I reproduce it here by kind

permission of the editor of that paper. The

story relates to an event that happened two or

three years ago. It was soon after Mr.Maskelyne’s famous box trick case had been

decided. With the permission of Mr. Maskelyne,

I was presenting the wonderful box trick in

the country. At one town I visited I was the

guest of a very old friend of mine, who was

much interested in magic of all kinds, and, justto please him and to amuse his friends, I gave

a private performance at his house one night.

He had suggested that the box trick could not

be done at a private house, and, to convince

him that he was wrong, I brought the box and

my assistant with me, and we did the trick inmy friend’s drawing-room. Afterwards, everyone

crowded round and bombarded me with ques

tions, and I suppose it was because I had been

talking so much about the box that when I

went to bed I dreamt about the box trick. My

dreams were of the most awful description.

Everyone in the dream had discovered how

the box trick was done, and I was being laughed

at by jeering crowds. At other times in the

dream I was shut in the box by myself, and



Minor Woes 143

was powerless to. get out, although I had pro

vided myself with a hatchet and hand saw.

Then the dream was changed, and I found,

to my horror, that, although my assistant had

got out of the box, someone else had managed

to get into it, and then, as fast as one man

escaped from the box, another man got insideit — in a most mysterious way.

At length my dreams ended abruptly, and

I woke up to find a burglar standing over me

with a revolver. I pinched myself hard, so

as to make quite sure that the burglar was

not part of the dream, and then I sat up.The burglar covered my movement with his

revolver.

“ Speak once,” he whispered, “ and you’ll

never speak again.”

Not having any wish to make him carry outhis threat, I did not speak. Then he said that

if I attempted to escape by the door or window,

he would shoot point-blank at my head. I had

the pleasure of seeing him take a little loose

gold from one of my pockets, and then I had

still greater pleasure in seeing him bark hisshins on the famous box, which stood open at

the foot of the bed.After he had sworn softly to himself, an idea

suddenly seemed to occur to him. He motioned

to me to get into the box. While I was




obeying—under cover of his revolver —he took

the key from the lock.“ Head down,” he whispered gruffly ; “ go on.”

Then he pulled the lid of the box down, put

the key in the lock, turned it, and took the

key away.

A moment afterwards I found myself being-lifted up, and before I had time to imagine what

the burglar was going to do with me, I was

deposited on the bed. People who have seen

the box trick will not need to be told that the

burglar had hardly closed the door behind him

before I had escaped from the box. Then Ifound my own revolver, and went downstairs

after the burglar. He seemed uncommonly

surprised to see me.

“ Hands up,” I whispered.

Somewhat to my surprise, he put his hands up

without even trying to get at his own revolver.

Then I made him walk backwards into my

bedroom.

“ Get into that box,” I whispered.

He quickly stepped into the box, and did not

remonstrate when I locked him in. The nextthing to do was to cover the box with the

bedclothes, so that my burglar should not alarm

the household. Then I dressed, slipped noise

lessly downstairs to my host’s room, and woke

him up. He seemed quite delighted at the idea



Minor Woes 145

of the box being of some real use in assisting

me to catch the burglar, and insisted on accom panying me in my search for a policeman.

We obtained the services of a sergeant, who

was simply radiant at the idea of catching a

burglar so neatly. But, to our great surprise,

when we were all in my bedroom, we foundthat the bird had flown! The box was there,

properly locked, but the burglar had vanished.

The police-sergeant thought we were playing

a trick on him.

“ You asked me to come and arrest a

burglar,” he said. “Kindly produce your burglar.”

“ I wish to goodness I could,” I replied. “ I

would not let a man like that escape for worlds.”

“You’re sure there was a burglar?” said

the sergeant, looking at me very suspiciously.

I don’t quite remember all I said to that

police-sergeant, but I know that my host apolo

gised for my unintelligible explanation, and

suggested that we should search the house.“ No,” said the police-sergeant, “ you said the

burglar was in that box. Where is he?”Then I had to eat humble pie, and explain

that the burglar had evidently discovered the

secret of the great box trick ; that was how he

had managed to escape. I could see, even then,

that the police-sergeant did not believe me,

10




although I was in such a state of utter collapse,

at the idea of the secret being discovered, thatI did not pay very much attention to him.

“ Well,” said my host, “though the burglar

has escaped from the box he may be in the house

now. Suppose we search.”

“ Not necessary,” I said ; “ it is quite evident

that he left the house, as he entered it, by the

window. I locked the door when I left him here,

and the door was locked when we returned, he

must have got out of the house by the window.”

“ Quite right, Mr. Devant,” said a voice

behind us. “ He did get out of the house by thewindow.”

We looked round quickly ; there was the

burglar, standing, unabashed, in front of the

police-sergeant!

“ Arrest him instantly,” I cried.

The burglar replied: “With pleasure.”At that moment the burglar threw off his

disguise and presented himself before me.

He was my assistant!

The rest of the story is soon told. My

assistant had arranged to play a little practical joke on me. He thought that he had

“ arranged ” the box in such a way that

I would not be able to find the secret. Then

he had intended to go to my host, and invite

him to come up and see me imprisoned in the




in that way I am never quite certain what

is going to happen next.

It does not do to be too playful with some

people. Once or twice, when I have asked a

man to lend me a watch, I have added jokingly—

if I have seen that it is an exceptionally good

one—Perhaps you would not mind throwingit on to the stage ” ; and they have taken me at

my word and thrown the watches. They have

expected me afterwards, in some miraculous way,

to put that watch together for them, and they

have got quite angry when they have dis

covered that they have smashed up their ownwatch.

On the other hand, some people are too pain

fully anxious about the fate of their watches when

they are in my hands. I have often been remon

strated with by an angry old man who has thought

that his watch has been really lost. I have knownan old man to get up and say that it is monstrous

and scandalous, that anyone like myself should

be allowed to comes to their town for one week,

and deliberately lose people’s watches in that

careless fashion ; and sometimes, when a man has

said this, I have heard it suggested afterwards,

by evil-minded people, that the man has been a

confederate of mine, and has simply made that

fuss in order to draw public attention to the

entertainment.




think the best audience is one composed of peoplewho really take an interest in conjuring, who have

met at a family dinner party, and who want me

to come and amuse them for one hour. That

time is not long enough for them to get weary

of conjuring tricks, and I get my audience's critical

appreciation.Only a man who really understands the

principles of conjuring can properly appreciate

an experiment in sleight-of-hand. I do not

believe, with some men, that a great deal of harm

is done by giving away the so-called secrets of

tricks, because, although the people may know

how it is done, that knowledge will simply help

them to appreciate how difficult it is to do it.



My Note Book 153

“ How stupid of me,” said the lady, as

she put the third kettle-holder in a piece of

paper.

Looking up from this simple task she missed

the cushion cover. I was busily engaged in

catching more money in the china bowl.

“ I am sorry to keep you waiting,” I said,“ but I haven’t caught enough yet. Shall I

collect a little money from those people who are

looking at me, and thinking they are going to

have a conjuring performance given to them

for nothing? ” So I collected about ten shillings

for the good of the charity. At the end Iaddressed the people who had gathered round

the stall.

“ I have here,” I said, “ a — er — beautiful

kettle-holder—I think you said?”

“Yes,” said the lady; “ hfteen-shillings-and-sixpence.”

“ Now,’’ 1 said, “ I am going to raffle it for

the good of the cause."

I obtained a sovereign for the kettle-holder,

and the lady was very pleased. When she

went to her large cash box she found threekettle-holders and a cushion cover neatly folded

up. A few moments afterwards, when I found

that the lady who had won the imaginary kettle-

holder in tile raffle was looking for me, I left.

I had paid fifteen-shillmgs-and-sixpence to the




charity for this little amusement, and it was

only fair that the people who went in for the

raffle, and saw my tricks, should pay something

for their fun.

On the following day I received a letter

from the lady who had been in charge of

the kettle-holder stall. She asked me to helpher at another bazaar! Some people are never

satisfied.

Writing of my catching-money-in-the-air trick,

reminds me of the many occasions on which

I have amused myself with this trick. At one

time, when on tour, I used to conclude thistrick by going among the audience and dis

covering half-crowns in the beards of the men

and the hats of the ladies.

“It is very foolish of you to carry money

about in this way," I would say ; “ you would

do better to keep it in your pocket," and to

their surprise I would leave the half-crowns

with them. Perhaps I would distribute a dozen

half-crowns—real ones—during the course of

the trick.

I remember once watching a dear old ladyas she examined her half-crown. She appeared

to be completely upset at the occurrence. First

she took out her purse, turned the contents

into her lap, and counted the coins. Then

she did sums in an account book. Then she



My Note Book 155

took off her veil and looked at it carefully,

as though she were searching for some secret

pocket that had hitherto escaped her notice.

Finally, she shook her head very slowly to and

fro, evidently with the intention of dislodging

any other stray half-crowns that might be con

cealed there. At last she put the half-crownI had found in her bonnet, on her lap, and

looked solemnly at it. Apparently she had

made up her mind that there was something

uncanny about that half-crown. When she was

leaving the hall she picked it up between her

thumb and first finger, and held it away fromher. She stopped before the hall-keeper, and

said :

“ I shall not take this home, young man.”

With that she dropped my good half-crown

into the hall-keeper’s pocket. She appeared

to be relieved at having got rid of the thing

so easily. When she had gone a few steps down

stairs she looked back to see if the hall-keeper

was embarrassed at being in possession of a

magic half-crown. The hall-keeper had refrained

from expressing his sorrow at the occurrence,and so the lady was quite satisfied. I noticed

that on the following evening the hall-keeper

wore a coat with two large breast pockets on

the outside.

Frequently after performing this expensive




trick I have gone outside the hall and watched

the doings of the people who have received

half-crowns. I have generally heard something

like this :

“ It can't be a good ’un,”

“ Looks like a good ’un.”

“ Well, let’s change it, anyhow.”Such is human nature.

Then the little party would adjourn—some

times to a sweet-shop, sometimes — I regret to

say — to a public-house. I knew not what went

on in those places ; but I noticed that when

the people who had had the half-crown cameout again, they generally ran off quickly.

Once on a Saturday evening, after I had

performed this trick, I heard a gentleman ask

his demure and simple-looking young wife if

the half-crown she had received from me wasreally a good one.

“ Don’t know, dear,” she said sweetly. “ But

you can put it in the collection to-morrow, and— er

— George — and — er — half a crown will do for

both of us, won’t it ? ”

Some of the people who received half-crownsevidently told their friends that, when they saw

me coming round, they were to do all they

could to attract my attention, I could always

tell which members of the audience had been

so prepared for the trick. One of them once



My Note Book 157

called me to him and said that he thought —

he was not quite sure— but he thought he

had half a crown in his beard.

“ Indeed ! ” said I ; “ and can't you find it ? ”

“ That I can’t.”

“ Let me try,” I said.

I saw the happy grin of expectancy comeover the faces of the man and his friends.

“ Curious," I said, “ but I can’t find it either.

You must have dropped it, or perhaps the barber

took it out when he cut your hair.”

After all, however, one ought not to be

either surprised or amused at meeting such

people. Most of us are keen on getting some-

thing for nothing. We are born with this

desire strongly implanted in our natures. I

discovered that fact by doing conjuring tricks

before children.The favourite tricks with children are those

in which the little dears have something given

to them — flags, or sweets, or dolls, tor preference.

Then they think that the conjurer is a very

nice man indeed, and so clever, too! Curiously

enough, I have found that audiences at lunaticasylums have this same liking for tricks in

which some kind of distribution is made. It

does not matter how simple the gifts are, or

how apparently useless to the recipients they

may be ; but, of course, I have always tried to




distribute things which I have known would be

acceptable.

On one occasion, however, I failed hopelessly.

I had heard, on getting to a certain asylum, that

many of the patients were very fond of gardening,

and, therefore, they would be delighted if I gave

them a few flower-seeds. I at once went downto the local seedsman and bought a large bag of

sweet-pea seed. This bag I introduced into a

silk hat at the end of the performance. Under

cover of a handkerchief I broke the paper, leaving

the seed loose in the hat.

‘‘There,” I said, “ the good fairies have antici pated your requirements, and have sent you some

seeds for the garden.”

Then I pulled the handkerchief quickly away,

handed the hat down at once to an attendant

who had been in the secret, and he passed the

hat round so that all the patients might see thecontents.

I had retired from the stage and was eagerly

awaiting the applause that I felt sure would

follow the conclusion of this trick. To my

intense surprise it was received in absolute

silence. Thinking that possibly the patientsmight be so overcome with joy that they had

forgotten to applaud, I began to prepare for the

next trick, when in rushed the attendant who hadassisted me.




again. I promised her that I would not produce

any eggs that evening, and she thanked me and

said she had a little surprise for me. I soon

discovered what it was. As I came on to the

platform she struck up “ See the Conquering Hero

Comes,” and she insisted on playing it right

through, while I stood in the centre of the platformand waited to begin.

Once on going to a schoolroom to give a

performance I found there was no piano. I had

brought a pianist with me, as usual — for a little

music is of great assistance during a conjuring

performance — and I therefore asked if a pianocould not be provided. But no piano could be

obtained. At last a dear old gentleman came

to me and said that if it was necessary that

I should have a little music, he would be

very pleased to bring his organette and play

on that. I thanked him, and the performance

began.

After my first trick the organette groaned out

the “ March of the Men of Harlech.” This was

bad enough, but at the next short interval the

instrument played the “ Old Hundredth.” Afterthe third trick it returned to the “ March of the

Men of Harlech,” and after the fourth the audience

were treated once more to the “Old Hundredth.”

And so we went on during the evening. It

appeared that the old gentleman had bought the



My Note Book 161

organette by weekly instalments, and those were

the only tunes he possessed. Since then I have

always stipulated that there shall be a piano

in the room in which my performance is to be

given.

I I



C H A P T E R X I V

SELLS

IDO not think that I have experienced the

worst sell in the world; but I have beenunpleasantly near to it. That distinction belongs,

in my humble opinion (people always say “inmy humble opinion ” when they are feeling rather

pleased with themselves and not in the least bithumble)—as I said, the distinction of having hadthe worst sell in the world, belongs to a youngfriend of mine who is an author. When he first began to send out articles and stories to the papers, he performed what, I believe, somewriters call “the boomerang feat”; that is tosay, he sent out his stories and articles in sucha manner, that they invariably returned to him.

But one day, to his great surprise, and tothe obvious displeasure of his friends, a paperaccepted one of his stories. That unfortunateman—he is not quite so unlucky now—jumpedwith delight. He bought many copies of the

paper containing his contribution, and sent them162



Sells 163

to all his friends. Only one man came to con

gratulate him on his success, and he threw out a broad hint to the effect that, as the budding

author was about to make a good living by his

pen, no doubt he would not mind advancing a

small loan, which would be promptly repaid on

the following Monday. My young friend was so pleased at his first success, that he would cheer

fully have lent his next year’s income to any man

who had expressed a wish to have it. Therefore

he advanced the small loan. In the evening, he

recollected that he had expended so much money

on stamps, during the previous two years, thathis literary business still showed a loss, in spite

of that first cheque. In this commercial mood

he sent an article to the same kind editor, and

awaited results. He felt sure that the man who

had accepted his story would be only too pleased

to secure an article by him.A fortnight went by ; and then one day, while

some half-dozen friends of the young author were

in his study, a letter came for him. He turned

it over, and saw that it was from the paper that

had published his story.

“ Another cheque !" he exclaimed excitedly ;

and his friends, realising quickly that they would

probably be asked out to a good dinner, con

gratulated the author. But in that merry group

of men was one pessimist.




“ You don't think,” suggested the pessimist,

“ that it can possibly be something returned, do

you ? You see, you haven’t opened the envelope.

yet."

''You needn’t worry about that,” said the

young author. “ The paper has only one thing

of mine, and that’s a long article. They couldn’tget it into an envelope that size ; besides, you can

see that there’s nothing in the envelope except

a note, and a little slip of paper! Now then, you

men, I’ll make a small bet with each of you that

the cheque is for something over a fiver.”

No one would take the bet. The youngauthor said that he would not keep them in

suspense ; he would open the envelope.

“ Of course,” he said, as he stuck his thumb

under the flap, and tore the envelope open, “ you

will all dine with me to-night, and then we’ll all

go to a music-hall and have a good time. To

morrow I’ll begin to work on a —what on earth

is this ? ”

He pulled out the contents of the envelope.

Now comes the sell. You, dear reader,

have had the sell. You, in the innocence ofyour young heart, have been thinking that the

envelope did not contain a cheque. That is

precisely where you have been sold. The young

author had a very fat cheque.

I thought I could not begin a chapter on sells



Sells 165

better than by perpetrating a sell. I entreat

you not to get cross ; it shall not happen again.

All the other sells in this chapter are genuine.

After reading this part of the book you will

understand why I look so haggard and worn.

If you do not believe that I look like that,

turn to the cover of this book and gaze at my photograph. You will then agree with me when

I say that the life of a conjurer does not consist

entirely in performing before crowded houses.

Sometimes a sell turns out to be a piece of

good fortune to you. I remember that on one

occasion—it was soon after I had received myfirst fee as a conjurer — I was asked to give a

performance at a charity bazaar. It was not

until after I had finished my work, that I dis-

covered that another conjurer had been expected,

and that his name was on all the programmes !This was a great sell for me, because, even at

that early age, I realised the value of publicity.

I went to the vicar and suggested that the

programme ought to have had my name on it.

The vicar thought for a moment, and then he

suddenly seemed to be particularly pleased aboutsomething. He went to the little room at the

side, in which I was to perform, and announced

to the people who were waiting to pay their

money, that there had been a mistake. Mr. A----------

had not arrived ; but Mr. David Devant had




been engaged at great expense (it was the firstI had heard of it, but I did not complain), andtherefore the price of admission would have to be raised from threepence to sixpence. Thatvicar was a good business man. Not only didhe give me this testimonial to my superiority to

Mr. A------

the conjurer, but he also rewarded mewith a free advertisement in his church magazine.Thus, what seemed like a sell turned out to

be anything but a sell.In most cases, however, my sells have been

quite genuine. Once, when I was a very young

conjurer, I wanted to do a trick with an egg.I rather prided myself on that trick, and inorder to make it appear as wonderful as possible,I had a small basin full of eggs on a side-table.I explained to my audience that it would be

perfectly easy for anyone to perform the trickthat I was about to present to them, if theyused an egg that had been specially prepared beforehand. To prove that I had not resortedto any such subterfuge, I had a dish of eggs,and I was willing to take any one of the eggs

chosen by the audience and break it, to showthat it was simply an ordinary egg. I wouldthen take another egg chosen by the audience and

perform my trick with it. I hoped that in thisway I should convince everyone that my trickswere done independently of any mechanical aid.



Sells 167

I took the dish of eggs down to the audience,and two eggs were chosen. One was brown,the other was white. I was commanded to breakthe brown one; but when I returned to thestage, I made a pretence of beginning to breakthe white one. I was stopped- — as I had ex

pected I should be— with a shout of: “No,no; break the brown one !” I made a pretenceof taxing the audience with having changed theirmind, and the longer I hesitated about breakingthe brown egg, the more they insisted that theywished to see the interior of that particular egg.

“Very well,” I said at last—and by this timethe audience had quite convinced themselves thatthe brown egg was a trick egg — “ I will breakthe brown egg ; but I may tell you that youhave added considerably to the difficulty of the

trick.” With that I tapped the brown egg ona plate. The audience at the back of the hallstood up ; those in the front chuckled to themselves at the idea of having puzzled the conjurer.

“Go on!” shouted a small boy at the backof the hall, after I had tapped the egg twice

on the plate, and nothing had happened. “ Goon! Break it! It ain’t an egg at all. Yousee, it’s going up bis sleeve directly.”

(This is the popular explanation of everytrick that is performed. Once, after I had beendoing some tricks with my sleeves rolled up,




I heard a lady say : “Yes, that’s all very well; but anyone could see that those were not hisreal arms. Those were merely cases over hisarms, and in those cases were little trap-doors.”)

Being exhorted by the ruder portion of theaudience to do the trick if I could, I tapped

the brown egg on the plate for the third time.I knew that I had cracked the shell; but theinward parts of the egg remained intact. Isuggested to the audience that the egg was bad,and that therefore it would be better left whole.The reply was that the egg was not an egg at

all.“ Then,” I said, “ perhaps you would not

mind breaking it. I have no wish to release a bad egg in the room.”

Then they jeered at me, and hands were

stretched out for the brown egg,“ See he doesn't change it,” cried one man.“ I’ll watch him,” shouted another. The brown

egg fell into the hands of a middle-aged spinster,who banged it on the handle of her umbrella, andthen declared it to be perfectly good—but

hard-boiled !I assured the audience that there had been

a mistake, and that I had not known of the stateof the egg. It was no use ; I had lost the confidence of my audience. I went to the dish foranother egg, hut that too was hard-boiled ; and



Sells 169

we subsequently discovered that all the eggs

had been treated in that way. It appears that

a certain lady, who was very much interested

in my appearance as a conjurer, thought she

would assist me in some little way. She had

boiled the eggs hard because, she had argued

to herself, that if by any chance I dropped araw egg in full view of the audience, I should

be laughed at! Not only was that lady the

innocent cause of the afternoon’s performance

failing hopelessly, but she was also the means

of my losing what little reputation I had gained

for myself in our town. It was in vain that I

told the audience that I had not known that

the eggs were hard-boiled, and that I could

have done the trick with eggs in any state —

in fact, with no eggs at all! They would not

believe me ; and to this day some of the people

who were present, have an idea that if you

want to learn how to take a bunch of ribbons

and a flag out of an egg, you have to begin

by boiling the egg hard. They do not knowhow you go on after that ; but they know that

that is the first part of the secret.I mentioned that I held the two eggs up

before the audience, and invited them to tell

me which one they wished me to break. Shall

I let out a little secret, and tell you that when

a conjurer requests his audience to choose




between one of two articles, he never really

allows them to make any such choice ? You

will say: “Oh! but we have seen conjurers who

haven’t attempted to influence us in any way,

when they have asked us to choose something.”

Well, this chapter is about sells, and so I

may tell you that you have been sold. This iswhat the conjurer does. We will suppose that

he wants to use one particular card out of— say

six cards, but in order to make the trick

appear extremely difficult, he wishes to invite the

audience to say which particular card he shall

use in the trick. The conjurer may perhapshold the cards up fanwise before the audience,

and ask them to choose three. If the card he

wishes to use is among those three cards, he

will throw the other three cards away, and will

then ask the audience to choose two cards. Ifthe card he wants in the trick is one of those

two cards, he throws the third card away, and

once more asks the audience to choose one of

the two cards. If they decide upon the card

he wants himself, he puts the other card down ;

but if their taste does not coincide with his,then he discards the card they choose, and

performs the trick with the one card—his own

card —which he still holds in his hand.

You will see that, in any case, the audience is

sold, and that the conjurer performs the trick



Sells 171

with his own particular card. Perhaps you will

remember this the next time that a conjurer

asks you to “choose a card.” It may interest

you to know that I never make use of the

“ conjurer’s choice ” when I am doing a card trick.

I have a much simpler method of arriving at

the desired result.A friend of mine has just come in. He has

been kind enough to say that I might as well

make the chapter on “ Sells” very short ; because

he thinks that any book written by me will

be, in itself, quite enough of a sell for most

people. I do hope you will not agree with him.

One of the worst sells 1 ever had was in con-

nection with one of my first engagements. I

received a letter from a man asking me to give

a performance at a certain hall in Notting Hill.

He said he would be glad if I would call on himthat night and make the necessary arrangements.

I went to the address on the letter, but could not

find the place anywhere. Then I asked a police-

man to direct me to the hall, and the policeman

told me that there was no hall of that name in

Notting Hill, or anywhere near Notting Hill.I had spent three weary hours in tramping

about London, before I discovered that the letter

offering me an engagement was a hoax. I sub-

sequently discovered that the letter had been sent

by another conjurer, who was giving a new and




very wonderful performance elsewhere, on the

same evening. He had evidently thought that

I should want to see his big trick, and that the

best thing he could do was to prevent me from

seeing it — lest I should discover the secret and

do the same thing myself. I suppose that in one

respect I may regard that hoax as a compliment ; but at the time, being very poor and very tired

and very hungry, I made a note of it, and added

it to my collection of woes.



C H A P T E R X V

SOME COMPENSATIONS

I N between some of the woes described in previous chapters have been intervals of

joy ; occasions when I have felt somewhat com

pensated for the troubles I had brought uponmyself by my generous, disinterested efforts toentertain other people, and earn my living atone and the same time. For instance, therehave been times when I have been praised forwhat I have done (no — this is not a work ofthe imagination), and sometimes the praise has been of the best possible kind—not the usualconventional compliment.

I remember once I was engaged to appear inan old-fashioned country house. My perform

ance had to be given in the large hall, whichhad a small gallery running round three sidesof it. I had a fairly appreciative audience, butI thought that some of the children were not sointerested as children usually are in a conjuringentertainment. Later on in the evening I

1 73



Some Compensations 175

Some people have an idea that a conjurer

is a kind of machine-man, who can be sent toa house — especially in the Christmas holidays —

and ordered to turn his machinery on at any

given moment. I like to lie back sometimes

and think that I have occasionally been able to

disabuse some people of that idea,I was once engaged to go to a bouse which

I was informed was close to a station. At that

time I was appearing twice a day at Messrs.

Maskelyne and Cooke’s entertainment at the

Egyptian Hall, and so I told the people, who

wished me to perform at their house, thatI could not come unless I could be sure of

getting back to the Egyptian Hall at eight

o’clock in the evening. They informed me

that that could easily be managed as their house

was not a five minutes’ drive from the station.

When I arrived at the station, I found thatthe house to which I was engaged to go could

not be reached in less than three quarters of

an hour. The consequence was that when

I arrived at the house I had time for only one

trick. The people were not at all pleased whenI told them that I should have to go back to

London then ; they seemed to have had an

idea that, having got me there, they would

be able to keep me for the remainder of theevening. A few days afterwards I received




a letter from the man who had engaged me

to say that, as I had not given them an hour’s

performance, he would not pay my fee. I replied

that I would refer the matter to my solicitor,

and in the course of the next week I received

my cheque.

On another occasion I was engaged to appearat a private party at eight o’clock in the evening.

When I arrived at the house, I was asked to

wait in the servants’ hall. I sent up word to say

that I was there, and that I was ready to give

the entertainment. The message came back

to the effect that the people, before whom Iwas to perform, could not see me then as they

were just finishing dinner, and would not be ready

for me for another hour or so. I sent back a

message to say that I had been engaged from

eight to nine o’clock, and that I could not wait

after that time. The reply came back that Iwas to wait until I was sent for.

I did not reply at once to this, but I began

to give my entertainment in the servants’ hall,

and a more appreciative audience I never had.

My tricks were very successful, and I was pressedto give some encores. At nine o’clock I received

a message from “upstairs” to say that the

company were all in the drawing-room and

waiting for me to come and do some conjuring

tricks. I sent back a reply—the butler was




very loth to take it, but there was no way out

of the difficulty—to say that I had alreadygiven my performance according to the arrange

ment, and that I was just leaving the house.

Here again I had some little difficulty in getting

my fee, and had to threaten legal proceedings

before I received it.

I should like to add that the really good

people — the people who are in society and not

in what a clever writer has called “ semi-society" —

have always been most kind and considerate to

me, and it has been a real pleasure to me to

perform before them and their children. It isonly the rich nobodies who try to act unfairly ;

and I am glad to think that in such cases I

have been able to obtain the assistance of the

law, and have thus made them keep to their

word.

If I talk much more like this you will thinkthat I am getting too serious. Let me tell you

of a few occasions when conjuring has helped

me to have a little amusement for myself.

Everyone will remember Mr. Maskelyne’s

box-trick case. During the hearing of the action,

I was called as a witness to show that a trick

can be performed in several different ways, and

yet always with the same effect to the audience.

To illustrate my evidence I began to conjure

while I was in the witness-box. I vanished a

I 2




half-crown in three or four different ways, and

finally offered to pass it invisibly into the judge’swig. I have since been informed that I was

getting very dangerously near to contempt of

court in suggesting such a thing ; but at the

time I seemed to be in no danger. As a matter

of fact, and at the risk of being considered

conceited, I may say that his lordship appeared

to be very interested and amused at my per

formance.

Many years ago I was performing in a small

town in which I was a complete stranger. The

inhabitants of that town were very sleepy;in fact, they were so drowsy that they did not

really appreciate the opportunity they had for

seeing me. The consequence of this slackness

on the part of the townspeople, was that business

was very bad. I sought an opportunity for a

little advertisement, and while walking aboutand thinking of a good plan to call attention

to my entertainment to be given that evening,

I saw something which I had never seen before.

This strange sight was observed by me in

a fishmonger’s shop, and I was so struck by it

that I stood in silent amazement before the shop,

A few passers-by stopped to see what was holding

my attention, and in the course of a few minutes

quite a respectable crowd was standing in front

of that shop. Presently it occurred to one of them




to ask another what they were all looking at.

The question was put to me.“ Don’t you see that rabbit hanging up there? ”

I replied. “ It does seem a shame to hang it up

before it’s quite dead, doesn’t it ? ”

“ Which one ? ”

“ The last but one on that row. Don't you see

its legs moving ? "

At first the people who could not sec the

rabbit’s legs jeered at the suggestion that the

rabbit was not dead; but when the people in

the front row of the crowd stood on one side

they all agreed that the poor rabbit was half alive,and that the man who had hung it up there

ought to be hung in the same position himself.

By this time the fishmonger was getting a little

curious to find out what everyone was looking at

in his shop.

A dear old lady, who had worked her way tothe front of the crowd, came forward, and, em-

phasising her words by brandishing her umbrella

in the fishmonger’s face, she told him that it

was a scandalous shame that he should treat

animals in that way. She said that it was quite

bad enough to boil lobsters alive, and she thought

that ought to be stopped; but to hang up a

rabbit while it was only half dead was a littletoo much, and she would report the matter to the

Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals




The fishmonger protested that the rabbit was

quite dead ; he said that he knew it could not be alive, because he had shot that particular rabbit

himself.“ Then," said the old lady triumphantly, “you

didn’t kill it properly.”

It was then my turn to put in a word, and Iassured the fishmonger that the lady was quite

right, and that the rabbit was certainly not quite

dead. I added that no doubt there had been a

mistake for which he was not entirely to blame.

The fishmonger who, by this time, seemed to be

getting a little dazed at the sight of the angrycrowd outside his shop, turned to me and said :

“ Which rabbit are they all talking about? I'll

soon show you if it’s dead or not.”

“Can't you see?” I said, going into the shop

and reaching the rabbit down ; “ why, this one

of course. It’s quite alive now —alive and

kicking!”

“Well, I'm blowed! ” said the fishmonger.

“ Here — let me put it out of its misery."

“ It’s a pity to do that,” I said. “ I’m going

to try and save its life, and keep it here as a pet for my little boy.”

“ Well, you’ll pay for it ? ” said the fish-

monger.

“ Certainly,” I replied. “ How much ?”

“ Two and sixpence.”




“ No,” I said ;“ that’s too much. I’ll tell

you what I'll do. I’ll give you a dead rabbit andsixpence for it."

By this time a large crowd of people were

tumbling over each other in their efforts to see

what was going on inside the shop. The old

lady, who had insisted that the fishmonger ought

to be ashamed of himself for being so cruel to

a rabbit, was urging me to put it out of its

misery.

“ Perhaps I’d better kill it, after all,” I said,

turning to the fishmonger.

Two boys in the crowd became deliriousin their joy at the prospect of seeing this

butchery.

“ Don’t let me see you,” said the old lady.

“ The poor thing shall not suffer,” I said.

“ Look ! ”

With that I struck at the rabbit, and thenheld up my arms wide apart. In one hand I

held a live rabbit ; in the other the dead one.

“ Why, it’s alive after all,” said the people

who noticed only the live rabbit.

“ Go on! ” cried the crowd nearest to thedead rabbit. “ Anybody can see it’s dead right

enough.”

Then the crowd saw the two rabbits, and I

took that opportunity to tell them that they

had been the victims of a little harmless deception,



Now Ready.

AN UP-TO-DATE CONJURING BOOK,

In paper cover, price 1s. net, or cloth gilt, 2s. net.

M A G I C M A D E E A S Y .

BY

DAVID DEVANT.

London : S. H. BOUSFIELD & CO., Ltd.

Norfolk House, Norfolk Street, W.C.

woes of a wizard text based

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