Sooner or later some modern magician, in advance over his rivals, will take this final step, and the curtain will rise on a stage with a box-set realistically reproducing a handsome room, with all its decorations and hangings and furniture in harmony, Jacobean in style, or Chippendale, as the performer's preference may be. There will be chairs and tables in their proper places; there will be book-cases, and window-boxes of flowers; and perhaps there will be a cellaret, where the performer may procure any goblet or decanter he needs. There will be a broad desk in the center, with its writing-pad and its book-rack, and possibly its heap of magazines and weekly papers. This set thus furnished will look like a room that has really been lived in; it will have a door in each of the side walls, and when the curtain rises the stage will be empty. Then the doorbell will ring, and the servant will enter at one door, and, going across the stage to the other, he will admit his master--the master at last of the truly modern art of magic. The magician will give his hat and coat to the servant, who will take them out, and who will never appear on the stage again except in response to the master's pressure on the electric button, ordinarily used to summon a servant. And the magician will present his succession of experiments in magic, utilizing only the objects which he may borrow from the spectators, or which would naturally be found in a gentleman's room. The apparent absence of all apparatus, the naturalness of the environment, the easy simplicity and the convincing reality of the back-ground--all these elements will coalesce to heighten the effect of the marvels to be wrought by a comedian playing the part of a magician. (1912.) XVI THE LAMENTABLE TRAGEDY OF PUNCH AND JUDY THE LAMENTABLE TRAGEDY OF PUNCH AND JUDY I