The summer is upon us. If locked in a little room with no windows or doors I’d still know it because news and letters become so scarce. I try to put something down but it grows wings and flies out of the window. It would be so nice if I could put out only ten issues per annum and get away with it as some do, but I guess the old saying “There’s no rest for the wicked or ambitious” is only too true. And if I stalled off for a couple of months, I’d be afraid I couldn’t get started again. Liberty magazine, however, for May 11th of this year, was recompense for putting up with the dearth of criticism as well as hallelujahs. A nice long article by Will Irwin, entitled ‘Can We Mortals See Without Eyes’, struck this person’s fancy and should be of great interest to many. It is replete with authentic data regarding university experiments in telepathy and clairvoyance. You won’t put it down until finished, and it should give food for thought. Liberty seems to go in a great deal for articles and stories about magicians and mystery. Undoubtedly editor Fulton Oursler’s great leaning in this direction is the reason. With his discernment though, a follower of the magazine is certain to get only the best of such writings.
A startling bit of printing is The Eckam Echo. One thinks he is getting a copy of the hometown paper but it turns out to be a newspaper of magic. Elmer has a novel medium in this latest evidence of his originality and between the articles, tricks and advertisements, you can’t miss getting some new ideas. As far as I know it is free, and after scanning the contents of the first issue carefully, I can do no less than advise everybody to be sure their name is on his list.
Clever people are to be found in the audience as well as behind the lights, a point which many magicians overlook. Up in Port Henry, New York, I was regaled by a fireman with an account of the Rouclere show seen over twenty years back. From the enthusiastic report twenty years later it must have been the ultra in artistic performances. Then, with a great glee, the raconteur of Lake Champlain told me about the one thing he had caught. During a substitution routine he had noticed that Rouclere was wearing patent leather shoes, but later, after a cloak and hood had been donned, he noticed that the wearer (supposedly Rouclere) had on shoes of a gun metal finish ! Although he didn’t know when or where anything had happened, and didn’t know the first thing about a solution, he did know that the man in the cloak wasn’t Rouclere, and the surprise finish was spoiled for this individual who couldn’t otherwise have been a better press agent for the show. And there are too many magicians who barge through their act and say “The yokels never notice this or that.”
Robert Gysel, the unnaturalist of Toledo, Ohio, writes that he has a locking device incorporated into the frame used for the matter through a sheet of glass trick which has become so popular of late with an astonishing lack of cooperation as to credit where credit is due. I don’t generally advocate handing too much out for examination as it tends to inspire distrust, but this is an exception. It makes the effect much better to hand the frame to a spectator, and while in his hands to insert the card or cards to be pierced under the clips.
Every now and then a book comes out made up along novel lines. Lloyd Jones has put one out entitled Meet The Boys of the Pacific Coast. Together with a history of activities in that section of the country are thirty tricks of a widely varied nature. There are many photographs and illustrations making the publication valuable, both because of the material and nice record of the high times they seem to be having. The price is a little stiff for these days but it has been put out with all regards to quality of printing and material. Giving the above mentioned book the once over reminded me of a publicity stunt I used but once but which is on my ‘preferred’ list. I have a clipping dated May 10, 1928 regarding it. When possible of being done it is a stunner for the press. Have a few reporters in to your hotel for a nip and interview and state you will present a test of thought transference with your partner in a distant city by long distance phone. First they are to select a number up to ten thousand. Then a mixed up series of five letters. The keys on anyone’s key ring are counted and noted down. Someone else names a color. In fact, the tests are unlimited. You now give one of those present the name and telephone number in a distant city and this person puts the call through. When they are reached, the person at your end of the wire says a number of tests have been agreed upon, whereupon the person at the other end correctly tells them all ! The best part of this is not that it is simple, but because it doesn’t cost a long distance call. A box of candy, a couple of tickets, or a couple of dollars will fix it up with any hotel switchboard operator as a joke. The operator, upon getting the call, merely takes it and says as usual “I’ll call you back”. The call is stalled for three or four minutes and then put through to an adjoining room or downstairs booth. Your partner has listened in on the selection of tests from an adjoining room or outside the door and reveals it as coming from a distant city. This is a perfectly practical feat and I wouldn’t write it so positively if I had not used it myself.
I thought of an angle several years ago that would make a lot of talk for those who are permanently situated in a city and play the surrounding territory. Have a trick using one or two pigeons. After producing them in some manner, open a window and let them fly away. Remark in an offhand way that it would be impossible to keep all the pigeons you produce. However, you don’t tell that the birds you use are homing pigeons and will be back on their roost long before you get home yourself.
The trick A Matter of Policy, which I had in The Jinx #9 for June, has been taken up by a number of timely performers. Max Holden saw possibilities in it and had printed a set of the cards in giant size. The illustrations of an elephant and donkey have been excellently done. Stuart Robson, after reading his own contribution in the Summer Extra entitled Horrors !!, decided that a nicely printed set of the word cards would be in order, so did that very thing. The Sphinx for June carried his advertisement. I want to make it clear that effects in The Jinx can be done without buying specially made apparatus. In many cases though, certain things can be made up in excellent style by the dealers for professional use. The Jinx, however, does not make a policy of selling apparatus for the tricks that it contains. When you buy The Jinx and like an effect, you can do it without further outlay. That’s what you pay for in the first place. And that’s what you get.
You never can tell what you are going to find out from day to day. The Pseudo-Psychometry effect on page 36 of The Jinx #9 for June found a lot of favor around the country. Fred Rothenberg of New York later informed me that he has wondered for years how the test was done, he having seen a medium present it in uptown New York over 25 years ago. The single person version was not my original idea but the two people version was my own thought. Fred told me that when he saw it done it was performed that way by two people, the medium and the lecturer, and that for the 25 following years he has had it in mind. I’m glad to know that a case like that has been cleared up by the sheet, even though accidentally. There are many instances like this and many readers who have witnessed puzzling presentations during past years. If they will only send me the details of what they saw, I won’t promise a thing but will try my best to dig out a workable method if not the exact procedure. I have a tremendous file of secrets and notes, and it is a shame to let such information go to waste if it can be of use or interest to somebody.
Many are the methods of ribbon restoration, but Ed Wolff of Rochester, New York, has given me a very excellent version which makes use of a common magical adjunct. A length of inch wide ribbon is freely shown and cut into three or four pieces. The cut ends are tied together, and pushing them into the closed fist they are pulled out from below in a restored length. It is only necessary to have one of the common pulls for color changing a handkerchief and the new effect with it is simply done and very clean. Instead of tying the ends, they may also be pushed into the fist separately which does away with the too common knot business.