Why is it that so many are willing to attribute occult powers to all magicians who perform inexplicable tricks? There is scarcely a person who cannot do one or more card tricks which will puzzle the most astute observer, but we do not marvel because we know that they are merely tricks; but let the trickster once announce that he is a mind-reader or a hypnotist, and three out of every five will accept the statement as truth and not seek further to disprove it. Thus, we are taught that credulity is a disease with which most persons are afflicted, and that it is very easy to fool the best of us. Those who are so weak as to accept every mystery as a manifestation of supernatural power, should obtain one of the many books which can be had at any library, and make a study of the art of legerdemain. Then, when attending a spiritualistic seance, or a slate-writing exposition, the student will be able readily to detect the fraud and to duplicate it for the amusement of his own friends. If every investigator would, before going to a seance, buy one or more of the books, which are on sale at every bookstore, showing how the various stage tricks are done, there would not be many spiritualists in the world. These books sharpen the wits, and while they may not give the precise methods adopted by the medium to be visited, they will show how easy it is to deceive the eye and to fool the best of us. Much has been said of the wonderful tricks of the fakirs in India, particularly of the Great Mango Trick, and all kinds of supernatural powers have been ascribed to these clever people. In these exhibitions, the fakirs take a seed and a pile of sand, and make a Mango tree grow, in a few minutes, to the height of three or four feet. The secret lies in the fact that the leaves and twigs of the Mango are such that they can be folded into a very small compass and rolled up within the hollow seed, so that when they are unrolled they do not show the slightest crease. The fakir covers the whole with a cloth, and operates beneath it, piling the dirt around it, and exhibiting the building tree occasionally to his astonished audience. Baldwin, "The White Mahatma," has exposed this and many others of the Indian tricks, in his book, "The Secrets of Mahatma Land Explained." Slate-writing tricks are done in a hundred different ways. Some operators carry a tiny point of pencil under their thumb nail, some have chemical compounds which render writing invisible until heated, or moistened, and some have duplicate slates. The messages they write are obtained in various ways, often by means of accomplices, and still oftener by guess-work. Some mediums have a regular detective force who make it a business to get acquainted with all susceptible persons, or prospective customers, and after getting a history of these persons, they convey it to the medium, who only has to await the coming of the victims to be able to make startling revelations.