"There are many motives for the writing of books, the most usual being the hope of money or fame. But in the service of the Goddess of Magic we have grown a little older than we once were, and perhaps a trifle cynical; at any rate, we have no great expectation of more than a modicum of either. Our motive in writing this particular volume was a somewhat rarer one; we wrote it because we had something to say that we believed was worth saying. Herein we have touched only on certain branches of sleight-of-hand, to which we felt that we had definite contributions to make; magic with cigarettes, with thimbles, and with cards. The bulk of the material will be found concerned with card mysteries, simply because that class of effect offers greater possibilities of variation than an other."--T. Page Wright. This is a wonderful book to add to any magic library.