Here my chum and I manufactured our apparatus: the Washerwoman’s Bottle, the Nest of Boxes _à la_ Kellar; the Card Star; the Coffee and Milk Vases; the Sphinx Table, etc. When all was ready, about two hundred invitations were sent out for a _Soirée Magique_. The great drawing-room of the house was fitted up as a theatre, with a stage at one end and drop curtain. We fenced in the stage with rich draperies, after the style of Robert Heller, and our gilded tables and silver candelabra with wax tapers looked very fine against the crimson background. It was the most elaborate amateur show I ever saw. Twenty minutes before the curtain rang up, both magician and assistant were seized with stage fright. We had peeped through a hole in the curtain and taken in the sea of faces. We dared not confront that crowd of youngsters without a mask of some kind. Happy thought! We decided to blacken our faces with burnt cork and appear as negro necromancers. The performance went off very well indeed, until we came to the “Card Star.” O fatal Pentagram of Pythagoras! The cards were chosen from a pack and rammed down the mouth of a big pistol, preparatory to firing them at the star, on the points of which they were to appear. I began my patter, facing the audience. “Ladies and gentlemen, I will give you an exhibition of magic marksmanship. I will fire this pistol (laughter) at the star on yonder table (renewed laughter), and the cards”—(ironical cat calls). I turned around, and to my horror, the duplicate cards were already sticking to the star; my assistant had let off the apparatus too soon. The curtain fell. I shed tears of rage at the fiasco. But, later on, I learned to act more philosophically. Magicians are subject to these mistakes. I have seen Alexander Herrmann’s {208} calculations all upset by comical contretemps of like character to the above, but he smiled benignantly and went right along as unconcernedly as ever. Conjuring certainly gets on the nerves of its devotees. IV.