The next authentic early information I have gathered regarding suspension concerns that wonderful performer who called himself Ching Lau Lauro. Presumably he was a Chinaman, and from the programmes in my collection he evidently appeared first in England, in 1828, when he was engaged to perform between scenes of various plays, including "Tom and Jerry," at the Coburg. I reproduce on page 231 one of Ching Lau Lauro's programmes. About 1833, or possibly a year earlier, he cut out some of his singing, and introduced the suspension with which he closed his performance. At this time he gave the entire programme. According to his programmes, in some places he excluded the public from the gallery, so I judge that his suspension was accomplished by the use of the iron rod from the back, which would have been in plain sight from the gallery. The stage would not permit the suspension to be worked out of range of the gallery gods. [Illustration: Ching Lau Lauro handbill featuring suspension in 1832. From the Harry Houdini Collection.] [Illustration: A Compars Herrmann programme of 1848 in which suspension is featured. From the Harry Houdini Collection.] When Robert-Houdin went to London in 1848 he found in the field of magic a clever rival, Compars Herrmann; a few months later came John Henry Anderson, the Wizard of the North. Both of these men presented the suspension trick in precisely the same manner claimed by Robert-Houdin as his original invention of 1847. Neither Anderson nor Herrmann claimed the honor of having invented the trick, and it is more than likely that the mechanician who made their apparatus for the suspension trick made the one used by Robert-Houdin also. Herrmann, like Robert-Houdin, called the trick ethereal suspension. Anderson gave it the title of "Chloriforeene Suspension," as the reproduction of an Anderson lithograph on page 234 will prove. During precisely the same period of time a brilliantly successful German conjurer, Alexander, was presenting the same trick in America, where he remained as a professional entertainer for ten years. In my collection, together with corroborative handbills and programmes, there will be found this statement from Alexander: "The suspension was at first produced by me in 1845 or 1846, after reading in an Oriental annual, edited by several officers of the Indian Army, the trick of a fakir who made a companion sit in the air by using a bamboo stick. My trick had no success, because the sitting was too near the ground. I then made him stand in the air, and the effect was marvellous." My meeting with Alexander, of which this correspondence was the result, marked an era in my search for material for this volume. Having read in a small book on magic, dated 1896, that a man named Heimburger, who had travelled in America as "Alexander the Conjurer," was living in his native town of Münster, in Westphalia, I determined to secure an interview with him if possible.