From the INTRODUCTORY. MY object in writing these hints on Conjuring is for the benefit of amateurs to promote lively and entertaining amusement for the home circle and social gatherings. My large experience enables me to explain and simplify many of the best tricks and illusions of the art. I present the key to many of the mystical mysteries which have puzzled and bewildered our childhood days as well as confounded us in our maturer years. The young student can in a very short time, if he be in the least of an ingenious turn, amuse and astonish his friends, neighbors and acquaintances. Preference has been given to those tricks which suggest others, the more complete and difficult performances and illusions have been passed by as being out of place; I shall not, therefore, in these elementary papers advert to those experiments which require ample resources, or a prepared stage, for exhibiting them - or which can only be displayed to advantage by consummate skill and the most adroit manipulation - but confine my remarks at present to those branches of the art to the performance of which a young amateur may aspire with prospect of success.