[21] “The cut represents the magic clock invented by Robert-Houdin about sixty years ago. This very remarkable time-piece consists of a dial composed of two juxtaposed disks of glass, one of which is stationary and carries the hours, while the other is movable and serves for the motion of the hands. This latter disk is provided with a wheel or rather a toothed ring concealed within the metallic ring forming a dial. The glass column which constitutes the body of the piece is formed of two tubes which operate according to the principle of the dial, that is to say, one is stationary and the other movable. To each of the extremities of the latter is fixed a wheel. These wheels gear with transmission pinions which communicate, one of them at the top with the movable plate of glass of the dial, and the other at the bottom with the movement placed in the wooden base which supports the glass shade covering the clock. All these concealed transmissions are arranged in a most skillful manner, and complete the illusion. The movable glass of the dial, carried along by the column, actuates a small dial-train mounted in the thickness of the stationary glass, and within an extremely narrow space in the center of the dial. It is covered by the small hand and is consequently invisible. The hands are very easily actuated by it on account of their extreme lightness and perfect equilibrium.”—_Scientific American, N. Y._ {127} “My neighbor then being, as I have just stated, warmly interested in my projects, was constantly talking of them; and in order to give me opportunities of practice in my future profession, and to enable me to acquire that confidence in which I was then wanting, he frequently invited me to pass the evening in the company of a few friends of his own, whom I was delighted to amuse with my feats of dexterity. It was after a dinner given by M. de l’Escalopier to the Archbishop of Paris, Monseigneur Affre, with whom he was on intimate terms, that I had the honor of being presented to the reverend prelate as a mechanician and future magician, and that I performed before him a selection of the best of my experiments. “At that period—I don’t say it in order to gratify a retrospective vanity—my skill in sleight of hand was of a high order. I am warranted in this belief by the fact that my numerous audiences exhibited the greatest wonderment at my performance, and that the Archbishop himself paid me, in his own handwriting, a compliment which I can not refrain from here relating.