Modern Magic: A Practical Treatise on the Art of Conjuring

Between each of the items above-mentioned, there should be an interval of one or two minutes (filled up by music), while the operator leaves the stage, and makes the necessary preparation for the next trick. It will further be found an advantage, where practicable, to divide the entertainment into two parts, with an interval of ten minutes or so between them, the curtain being let down during such interval. The few minutes’ break is always acceptable to the audience (who are apt to become fatigued by too long protracted attention), and is especially valuable to the performer, as enabling him to re-arrange his servante, removing articles that have served their purpose, and replacing them by such as may be needed for the tricks to come. An overcrowded servante is a fertile source of annoyance and failure, as an article accidentally falling from it reveals the existence of a receptacle behind the table, and thereby deprives the performance of half its effect. When a re-arrangement of the servante between the parts of the performance is impracticable, it is well, if any tricks involving the production of articles from this quarter are included in the programme, to introduce such tricks as early as possible, so that the servante may be relieved of such articles, and left clear for its second use of getting rid of articles upon it. We have known a professor, performing the “flying glass of water” trick, and in placing the glass on the servante, knock down a cannon-ball, placed there to be introduced, later on, into a hat. That cannon-ball weighed on the professor’s mind for the rest of the evening, and the performance was practically spoilt.