Secrets of the great mysteries now revealed for the first time

In publishing this book a faithful endeavor has been made to present all the best tricks that the author has performed, both in public, in theatres and places of amusement, and in private. It is believed, then, that this book is complete ; containing a greater number of tricks in actual usage than any other work yet published, with full explanations and illustrations in regard to the various methods of escape, as used by the author. It would be impossible to print in one volume the thousand and one tricks that are occasionally per- formed. The larger proportion of such tricks have but a temporary existence, performed to-day and forgot- ten to-morrow. The ingenuity of the maker of new tricks is endless, but his apparent genious generally amounts to nothing more than the changing or blending of one or two well-known tricks and the pro- duction of an inferior trick. During the time that I was exhibiting these acts my methods of preparing for and exhibiting my tricks ..