dding in the Hat! The
Inexhaustible Bottle! And Numerous other Marvels and Mysteries lately
Imported from India and the East!

"The above Unrivalled Performance will be given for only 25 cents
admission. Proceeds to be devoted to Benevolent Cause. Doors open at
7.30. Performance to begin at 8. Come early and avoid being turned away.
No reserved seats. Carriages may be ordered for ten o'clock."

We debated some over the last line on the handbills, but finally decided
to let it go in. It made the bills look more cosmopolitan and did no
harm.

Tom and Jonas were to be the principal performers. I was general ticket
agent and business and stage manager. We all had our dress suits with
us, and, of course, we wore them when the time came.

Well, that was the largest crowd that ever came to an entertainment in
Colby. There hadn't been anything going on all winter. Most of the young
people had never seen any sleight-of-hand tricks, and all the old people
turned out to help Grandma Colby. Before eight o'clock the hall was
jammed. Every seat was taken, and people crowded into the broad aisle
and sat on the platform, and stood up all around in a black fringe
against the wall.

We had rigged up a curtain in front of the narrow platform, and at eight
o'clock, when the hall was so full that no more people could get into
it, the curtain was pulled aside by Peter Samuels, the stage director,
and revealed the Magician's Home.

The first trick on the programme was "The Egg and the Handkerchief."
Jonas was behind the table acting as Tom's assistant, while I was
stationed just out of sight behind a fold of the curtain, ready to step
in at the right moment, for the trick required the use of three persons.

It was simple enough, and yet Tom's blunder at the start led to the
ridiculous accident which was the first of a series that made that
sleight-of-hand performance a thing for Colby people to reckon time
from.

The trick was, first, for Tom to produce an egg from Jonas's month by
rapping him on the back of his head, Jonas already having been provided
with a guinea-hen's egg secreted in his mouth for the purpose. Then,
when the egg appeared, Tom was to pretend to place it in a handkerchief,
really substituting for it a china egg of the same size, and slipping
the real egg into a little pochette of his dress-coat. What he did,
however, was to drop the real egg into the handkerchief, because, as he
afterwards said, the china egg stuc