20
THE CHINA MAIL SPECIAL CHRISTMAS SUPPLEMENT, DECEMBER 19, 1940.
Children Believe In Secrets
If we want to know why chil dren believe in magic we must take a really close look at fairy- land. Fairyland is a place where the unexpected always happens.
Fairies
The heroes and heroines there are powerless, caught in the ginger never grown-up people. They bread house of a hypocritical old are young, helpless, and credul- witch, who pretended to be kind. ous, the victims of misfortune, as A fairy will appear from nowhere. our own small sons and daughters You turn to where her voice was. often imagine thentselves to be. She has disappeared as suddenly By the aid of magic, they pan and strangely as she came. triumph completely over the If you come to think of it, the forces working against them, as work may look very
much like the children would surely like to fairyland to a small child. A baby
do.
seem like
a
Of My Magic
the day of magic "done?"Only he was a mystic.
working at odd jobs to earn 摄
á few generations ago people The trouble with these old-time living. In this way I progressed thoughout the world, supersti- magicians was that they linked up until I got a job in a Y.M.C.A. in- tious and easily gulled, were prae- their magic with. alchemy and stitution,
I had seen several magicians at tically all believers in the power necromancy. of magic. Magie was in its hey-
I do not
profess to practice. work on, the stage, and, like sil day then, the modern
observer anything supernatural. I realise small boys, I was impressed by their skill. I have a mechanicul would say. Never again will it perfectly well that modern magic
I still cannot rest, reach such popularity. People no
consists chiefly of ingenious tricks mind, and
when I see anything unusual, un- longer believe in magic, and no and clever manipulation. I practice til I find out how to works." longer can they be mystified; they magic for amusement, are incredulous and sceptical. amusement of huge audiences, and it I succeed in almost making
But seeing is believing or is
If
what this it?
you wonder means, if you doubt that you can a few weeks old is a completely see a thing actually happen and He has few yet believe it to be absolutely im- Sleeping Beau ́y is doomed from helpless creature.
them satisfied possible that it should happen, let her cradle through the mere ca needs, but wants
sense me show you a little of my magic. price of a wicked fairy. Lazy immediately. He has no
As a
matter of fact, the magic Jack is more kindly treated by of time or place, no knowledge of fate. The pretty beans, which how things come to him, why they of the Middle Ages was far fron nor how to get being the greatest magic the world ex are withheld, he so foolishly accepts in change for the cow, as any child them. When he wishes for food, has ever seen. The
carly magicians, men who achiev- might, turn out to be magic ones. Its bringer must
ed reputations and who passed Thus he is saved from his mother's beneficent fairy.
Fairy tales and legends were down into history as noted figures, anger and led through all sorts of adventures to ultimate triumph. an attempt to explain, when the were as nothing compared with In fairyland there are giants world was younger, all that the the magic that is within your pow-
of er to witness to-day. and ogres who growl, terrifying people could not understand
of nature
It progres- attacking Magic is a science, threats. Sometimes the ogre has the forces
It a a good wife, who hides you and them in their helplessness and of ses like everything else. gives you food, but only because capricious and cruel circumstances magician of medieval times were she has not guessed that you want over which they had no control. to sit at one of my performances to destroy him, for she, too, is in Even to-day, to express wonder he would probably be so impress- ed that he would either commit his power, and on his side when we sometimes says, "It's like ma-
Even to-day, some of us suicide or bury his head in the it comes to a fight.
gic. You omit a small kindness, and would be glad of a magic wish to sand and allow the whole of his the fairies withhold their favour. give us our heart's desire, or a erstwhile followers to spend the They are always watching, listen- fairy godmother to help us out of rest of their lives kicking him for being such a fool to imagine that ing and knowing. You may
be an intolerable situation.
Etiquette
A Book of Formulae
for the
By Max Mallini
them believe that the impossible is accomplished, this is merely due to my mastery of the art of
illusion.
when at
I started doing magic tricks with efforts of no other purpose in view than Life was my own amusement. hard for me in my youthful days. I was taken to America
My days I was but a child. school were punctuated by a con stant fight against persecution by my comrades who seemed to re- gard the fact that I was Swedish as sufficient excuse for making me all their practical the butt of jokes.
I soon learned that the most magical way of making life worth living in this respect was to punch hard and often. At the age of 12 I left school to make my way in the world selling newspapers and
As far as I could, I found out how these magicians I had seen performed their tricks. Then I began to evolve small tricks of my own and try them on the oth- ér fellows in the Y.M.C.A. Pretty soon I had my own act put to- gether and was giving perforin- ances at church concerts and such like.
One day the secretary of, the Y.M.C.A, saw me doing by stuff. "Kid," he said, "You're good. will put you on our next big per- formance."
I
Sure enough I was "on" and did half an hour's show. It so hap- pened that one of the big thea- trical agents was in the audience and the next day I got a a letter inviting me to go round and see him. At this time, by working day and night, I was making about 15 dollars a week. He offered me a three-years' contract as the Boy Magician to tour America at a salary beginning at 75 dollars weekly.
For a while I held out, chiefly there because everybody told me was no money in magle; that this flare of mine was only a passing fancy, and that it would lead me nowhere.
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Biggest Chance for X'mas Gifts !
Burma Road
Road to Shanghai
Road to Endor
Stalin's Russla
Secret Agents Against America
Secret Agent of Japan
Captain Courageous
Encyclopaedia Sexualls
Roget'a Thesaurus
The Complete Book of Games.
Twentieth Century Book of
Formulas Processes
American
Vol. 1-2
Podtry and Prose
Century Readings for A Course
in English Literature
Nazi Dictatorship
The Woman Who Lived in
Hitler's House
The Dragons Teeth They Wanted War Roosevelt
Choice Readings
The Flowering of New England New England Indian Summer
The City of Gold
Chad Hanna
Recipes of All Nationa
The Family
Gibbon's Stamp Catalogue 1941 Scott's Stamp Catalogue 1941
Red Star Over China
Insanity Fair
Disgrace Abounding
Nemeals
Isolated America
Japan's Feet of Clay
A Roving Commission
Goodbye Mr. Chips
I promised myself i would re- tire when I was 32, but Fate and the War stepped in, with the re- sult that my business was closed down and I found myself start- ing all over again.
By
Emily Post Staff
$6.00
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Kipling
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Victor Robinson
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To cut a long story short, the time I was 18 I had toured
by
Goddard
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Henley's
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the whole of America and opened my own factory for manufacture of scores of tricks of all descriptions which were to would-be magicians through- out the world.
had
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sold
J. W. Cunliffe
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1
Schuman
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Pauline Kohler
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Elley Queen
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otto D. Tolischus
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McLeon Cumnock
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Countess Morphy Nina Fedorova
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BOOK OF THE FILM
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Henry Champly
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The Tree of Liberty
Hammand
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Shape of Things To Come
By Elizabeth Page H. G. Wells
$3.50
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Max Eastman
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The Invincible Adam
Viereck-Eloridge
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Rowan
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P
I Married Adventure
Osa Johnson
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Vespa
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Edgar Snow
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My Son My Son
Spring
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Douglas Reed
All this and Heaven Too
Rachel Field
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Disputed Passage
Lloyd C. Douglas
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The Nazarene
Sholem Asch
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How Green was my Valley
Richard Llewellyn
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A Farewell to Arms
Ernest Hemingway
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Freda Utley
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The Yearling
Rawlings
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Churchill
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Jean Fontenoy
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Northwest Passage
Kenneth Roberts
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The Citadel
Cronin
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Hauser
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Vicki Baum
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Escape
Ethel Vance
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Magnificent Obsession
Lloyd C. Douglas
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Native Son
Richard Wright
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Miller
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H. G. Wells
3.80
Rebecca
Maurier
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Gerald Samson
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Turnabout
Thorne Smith
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Anor Lin
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Topper Takes A Trip
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Andre Maurois
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The Mortal Storm
Phyllis Bottome
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Dickens
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Anthony Adverse
Hervey Allen
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Meyer Livin
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We Are Not Alone
James Hilton
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Anne of Green Gablea
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L. M. Montgomery
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Anna Karenina
Count Leo Tolstoy
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Rains Came
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John Steinbeck
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Wuthering Heights
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Pride and Prejudice
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Camille
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Good Earth
Pearl S. Buck
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A Tale of two Cities
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Arthur Bryant
The Sea Hawk
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THE MODERN SERIES
Chiang Yee
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"
Yesterday &
Woman in Love
By D. H. Lawrence
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Florence Ayscough
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The Rainbow
D. H.
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Hertzeir
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Bons and Lovers
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11
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Lost Girf
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A. Modern Lover
10
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The Woman who Rode Away
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Lady Bird
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The Night Life of Gods
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Did Sha Fall : .......
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11
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School
The Glorious. Poat
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Rain in the Doorway
Secret Shanghai
Shanghai City for Sale
Shanghai 37
Shanghai the Paradise of Ad-
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Outline of History
Warning Lights of Asia
Girl Rebel
Art of Living
David Copperfield
Citizens
New Conchse Pictorial Encyclopedia
Supernatural, Omnibus
Kitty Foyle
Long Valley
When the Whippoorwill
Designing Women
Madonna of the Sleeping Cars
A City of Bella
March to Quebec
The Dream we Lost
Unfinished Victory
The Complete Fortune Teller
Great Tradition
A Chinese Childhood
Chinese Women
To-day
The Doctor and his Patients
The Secret of the Marahbanks
The Story of the Pacific
The Sea Hawk
Of Human Bondage
Jane Eyre
Busman's Honeymoon
Beware of Pity
A Programme for Prograss
Present, Indicative.
Freedom's Battle..........
The Turning Wheels
Infants and Childron
What's. Funny and Why The Bedside Esquire The
Boston Cook Book
Cooking
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MODERN READER'S SERVICE
33, Queen's Road, C. 1st Floor. Next To the Queen's Theatre
3.50
At one time I was obliged live for one week on 25.
to That
This
made me think. I immediately formed a one-week plan. provided for me eating only one bowl of soup and a roll every day at six o'clock. I got along fine, From this I evolved the two years plan, and although money was be ginning to come in again I kept it up. Since then, although I live in good hotels and food is plenti- ful, I manage nicely on one meat a day.
I developed a sense of humour and at that time and went up down Broadway meeting my friends of more luxurious days and exchanging funny stories, and to-day that bad period seems to me to have been one of the
that outstanding experiences
I would not have missed for any- thing. I could have grieved and worried and pestered everyone with my trouble, but I figured that would not solve my problem. As it was, there was not a soul who knew of my circumstances until long after I was back Easy-street again.
on
To return to magic; of course I wear a curious ring. All magi- clans have something like that, but I can't say it responds to the usual magic formulae, and you can say "Abracadabra" or "Sim Sala Bim" until you are blue in the face, and nothing much will happen if you rub it. But it certainly is a curious ring all the same. It is a gold respresentation of a human skeleton encircling my finger and the eyes are two small diamonds quite a grotes- que affair. It was presented to me by a Russian magician 'in à cafe in Moscow one day after I had finished a show.
Japane
ring
I was attracted by the which he wore.. I had never seen one like it before, so he let me try it on, and when he found that it atted me he said: "You keep it. I was going to give it to you anyway" when I protested against taking such a quaint and valuable token "because I want something from you.”
"Name: it,” I said. "Your levitation illusion, Vanishing Woman," he said.
the
Well, he studied me for a few days, and eventually I gladdened his heart by giving him the trick. People who think magicians don't give their tricks, away :- aré wrong, I think it helps things along considerably if you tell them something about your busin- ess. It puts you on a mora hume- an basis with them straight. But, juit the same most, like to be mystified, and fin that there are many. not to be told eve
ist about an illusions
+