Book Description:
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CONJURER AND CON FEDERATE I. The Conjurer AMBITION takes men very differently. This would enter Parliament, and That would have a play accepted at the Court; This would reach the North Pole, and That would live at Chislehurst; while a fifth would be happy if only he had a motorcar. Speaking for myself, my ambition has always been to have a conjurer perform under my own roof, and it has just happened. I obtained him from the Stores. No one, I suppose, will be taken in by the statement that I was engaging this wizard for the children ; it was really for myself. Much as the children enjoyed his tricks and his banter (so fascinating, as one of his testimonials said, to the family of the Countess of ), it was I who enjoyed him most, because I helped him with his preparations ; saw him unpack his wonderful bags and lay the sacred paraphernalia on the table; procured for him such articles as he required ; and so forth. I have never been so near magic before. Like all great men when one comes closely in touch with them, he was quite human, quite like ourselves ; so much so, indeed, that in addition to his fee he wanted his cab fare both ways. It is very human to want things both ways. From Character and Comedy. I have been wondering how long it would take me to learn to be a conjurer, and if it is not too late to begin. I used to meditate a course of billiard lessons from one of the great players, but I gave that up long ago. I realised that a man who wants to play billiards must have no other ambition. Billiards is all. But one might surely in the course of a winter acquire something more than the rudiments of conjuring, and I would pay a guinea a lesson with pleasure. I don't want to be a finished conjurer. I merely want to do three tricks with reasonable dexter...
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