Modern Magic: A Practical Treatise on the Art of Conjuring

1. Don’t be nervous. (The reader may possibly consider that this is a matter in which he has no choice; but nothing could be a greater mistake.) A little diffidence is excusable on the first presentation of a new programme, but never afterwards. 2. Take your time. Deliver your boniment like an actor playing his part, and not like a school-boy repeating his lesson. Further, give your audience time to see and appreciate your movements. Young performers are very apt to exhibit the second phase of a transformation without having sufficiently indicated the first to the spectators. The change of, say, an orange to an apple, falls decidedly flat if nobody noticed that the article was an orange in the first instance. 3. Don’t make any parade of dexterity, and don’t affect any unusual quickness in your movements. If you are about to vanish a coin, don’t play shuttlecock with it from hand to hand as a preliminary; but make the necessary “pass” as quietly and deliberately as you possibly can. Don’t talk about “the quickness of the hand deceiving the eye,” and still less do anything to support such an idea. The perfection of conjuring lies in the ars artem celandi--in sending away the spectators persuaded that sleight-of-hand has not been employed at all, and unable to suggest any solution of the wonders they have seen. 4. Don’t force yourself to be funny. If you are naturally humorous, so much the better; but in any case perform in your natural character.