Editorial

This number of the erstwhile Jinx makes the fourth issue that has successfully appeared and ye editor is gratified beyond words at and for the letters that have been received in regards to the contents of said periodical.

I’ll admit that I started out with the idea of putting before the magical world a sheet of three good tricks a month. Whether I’ve done that or not is a matter of history since the first three issues included thirteen separate and complete effects (with nothing to send for or buy from the publisher) and I wish to state now that it is not zeal or an over amount of ambition that made me do it. I have enough material of my own to run The Jinx for two years. With what I have been receiving in the way of tricks and effects there is no doubt in my mind but that this still uncompromising sheet will be taking up space in the showcases of the dealers for four years to come.

If you pick up and read The Jinx you’ll find at least one trick you can use. Every item is complete unto itself. I pay cash for every outside trick that I can use but it has to suit no other person than myself who at present comprises the entire staff regardless of how many grand sounding titles might be invented. I want to apologize to a certain extent to those who have sold me material which I have used. I want ideas that make complete effects and for them I pay and give credit. From that point on I lead the life of an individual. The titles are my own and the descriptions and explanations are as I see them. At times I get a little out of bounds and become facetious as well as allegedly funny but I do justice to a trick as is my nature and no one can deny me that, right ?

Magicians in general seem to be on an everlasting search for new tricks. Not that new tricks aren’t needed but it appears to me that a great many of the good old tricks are misused and trampled upon by individual idiosyncrasies. The important one to me at the moment has been mentioned in Jean Hugard’s latest book called Close Up Magic.

Mr Hugard has crept up upon the present vogue for close-up and typical night club trickery and if he gets mad at my verbatim quotation from his book, I’m sorry but above all the perfect table tricks one paragraph in the introduction was exceedingly in order: “Particular attention must be paid to the hands. They should be regularly manicured and kept in the best possible condition.” I can’t add to that. It’s all there. Digest it.

By the way, although I don’t use this sheet to advertise my own individual publications, I am safe in saying that the last book I put out Sh-h-h. It’s a secret is entirely out of print and has been for nearly two months. I’ll pay two dollars a copy for any I can get in good conditions as the price has been put up to three dollars. Send them to me at Waverly, N.Y.

And while I’m at it I can’t forget the Christmas cards. I have seven or eight steady friends who don’t miss me but twenty-nine came in addressed to none other than The Jinx and I thought it was swell. I’ll admit I’m a slacker when it comes to Holiday greetings but it isn’t because I didn’t want to send out as many as I could. I guess I’m just one of those persons who was ‘born tired and never got rested’.