John Northern Hilliard – Leaves from my notebook

This is a compilation of Hilliard’s contributions to Floyd Thayer’s magazine The Magical Bulletin.

A few sporadic contributions to magical journals here and abroad followed The Art of Magic. The most important of these stray papers was the first account, in The Sphinx, of a thought-reading card trick of my own invention that has since enjoyed considerable popularity. I refer to the experiment commonly known as “The Telephone Trick.” No one was more surprised than myself at the immediate and widespread popularity of this trick. That its success was not ephemeral, I judge from the fact that Mr. Thayer still keeps it in stock, and that many writers, including Mr. David Devant, have done me the honor to include it in their works. That they did not know whom to credit it to is not surprising; for I doubt if many magical enthusiasts even remember my explanation of the trick in The Sphinx, something like a decade and a half ago. I have never taken the trouble to make the matter public; but as I am about to write again of things magical, after a silence of many years, I avail myself of this opportunity to claim my own again.

• Foreword
• A Personal Note By Way Of Introduction
• The Triple Mystery
• The Chinese Rings
• The Quick Or The Dead
• Roll Your Own