AN INTRODUCTION.

Dear Will Goldston,

You have honoured me by asking me to write a foreword to your book. Frankly, I do not know what to say. It is usual, when such forewords are written, to pay some tribute to the character, or achievements, or personality of the author.

As I am writing a preface and not a book, I must leave all that unsaid. As you know. when I think of magic, I think of your officean office where, whenever I visit it, I meet magicians, famous and struggling, some so clever that I always start to eat my hat before they make it vanish into air, some so little known that they tell me they sometimes read what I write.

From the walls, there look down photographs and paintings and sketches of illusionists known right around the world. I see the faces of the great Lafayette, Chung Ling Soo, Houdini, Carl Hertz, John Nevil Maskelyne and Horace Goldin, men who have mystified me when I was younger, men who, when I grew to know them, seemed even more clever at close quarters than they were, far away upon the stage.

Always, when I see those portraits, there is conjured up in front of me the spirit of Romance. I know that behind every one of those lives is a story of years of patient work. I know that, mixed up with their shows, there have been great moments of real drama. I know that in each life there has been some incident more striking than anything that the public has seen when they have paid to go in.

When I read the proofs of "Sensalional Tales of Mystery Men," a great deal of those mysteries were revealed to me for the first time, and I saw, in cold, truthful print, explanations of many things that had puzzled me for years.

My only quarrel with your book is that it is much too short. You could have made it ten time as long, and even then left me interested in every new chapter you wrote.

When, quite casually, the other day, I talked with you and Horace Goldin, in your sales room, I saw on the counter a wooden box addressed to some missionary in a far distant village of the West Coast of Africa. Inside it was one of your Sealed Books of Mysteries, going thousands of miles, so that a Christian preacher might mystify the native members of his congregation, even more, he hoped, than did the witch doctors of the surrounding tribes. In that little incident, was the making of a great romantic story. Your rooms are full of such possibilities. Your mind is a storehouse of entrancing memories.

I wonder what will happen, when the missionary's box is opened, and the lock is turned, and the mysteries reveal themselves from each printed page.

You suggested my election, me night, as a vice-president of the Magicians' Club, of which you are the head. I have presided over one of your dinners. I have addressed your gatherings. Every time I enter your world of Magic, trembling at the door, I realise more that you are the centre, and the clearing house, of a great trade in Mystery and that, so gentle and kindly is your approach to men, you are the custodian of a thousand secrets which, were they ever printed with diagrams, would kill Magic, once and for all.

I remember Chung Ling Soo, the cheerful Scots-American. Well, your book takes us behind the scenes of his tragic end.

Horace Goldin's solemnity and serious mien have often impressed me. Well, you have given us an idea of the humorous side of his character.

Houdini--well, he has always been a mystery. You have laid bare a great deal of that, with a daring courage.

The Zancigs--their tricks will puzzle Mankind for Years, though Julius has gone and his second wife has, of course, retired. Your Zancig chapter is most illuminating.

Now, this is only a little of what I wanted to say. If I go on, I shall write the whole book.

Then it will not be nearly as interesting as yours, for I do not know anybody in the world, except yourself, who could have written the chapters which I have read.
They tell me there are 10,000 conjurers in England, amateurs and those who do it for a living.

Well, there are at least 1,000,000 people who are fascinated by all that concerns Conjuring, or Magic, as your illusionists always try to make me call it. For that reason, I am sure your book will find 1,000,000 readers.

HANNEN SWAFFER.