Students of magic history are forever trying to uncover the truth about the great magicians of the past. It would seem that the clearest view of this by-gone era is through the eyes of experienced magicians who spent their entire lives watching performers of note and then took the time to set their honest opinions down on paper. People tend to be brutally honest in personal correspondence, and that brings us to J. Alexander Esler. In 1964, a month before his eightieth birthday, he sat down at his typewriter to answer a letter that had been sitting on his desk for weeks.

The months close-up tutorial kicks off with a fresh take on one of the great impromptu dollar-bill tricks: the Torn-and-Restored Bill. Due to the popularity of the January issue on John Scarnes Two Card Transposition, Joshua describes two new versions by Darwin Ortiz and Joel Givens. Throw in a deck switch, a deck production, and blank deck, and youve got another exciting column!

Although this months routine is for the Fortune Telling Fish, the big picture is really about the fact that you can do great things with simple, inexpensive props. In his excellent lecture, Barrie Richardson teaches: "The method is not the thing. And the prop is not the thing. It is what you get out of it that matters most: the entertainment, the comedy, and the mystery."

The performer borrows a deck and, with a marker pen, makes an X on the back of an unknown card. To dispel the concerns of the decks owner, the performer promises to replace the marked card. He removes his wallet and shows inside the zippered compartment a single face-down card with a back which matches the design and color of the borrowed deck. The card is replaced unseen in the zippered compartment and the wallet returned to the performers pocket or handed to a nearby spectator. A spectator freely names any card. This card is removed from the borrowed deck and revealed to be the card with the X marked on its back. The wallet is reopened and the unseen card revealed to be a duplicate of the freely named card. As this card is unmarked it is swapped for the marked selection; the borrowed deck can be returned complete and undamaged.

Three spectators each select one card from a shuffled deck in an extremely fair manner: While your back is turned, the first spectator cuts a small packet, remembers the card he cut to, then shuffles his packet and keeps it with himself. Another small packet is spread face down on the table and the second spectator points to any of those cards. Only when your back is turned, does he take out the chosen card himself, remembers it, replaces it anywhere in the spread, then gathers up and shuffles the cards, also keeping them to himself. The remaining third of the deck is slowly spread in front of a third spectator, asking her to merely think of one card. This she does. To make things completely fair, she is also allowed to shuffle her third of the deck and keep it. Although you do not touch or look at any of the cards, you reveal the three chosen cards in a dramatic and entertaining way! By J? Alexander .

Heres a flashy way to bring back a borrowed object, after losing it ?due to incompetence, of course.

A few months ago, Mark Wilson told us that magic on television is being faked too often by camera tricks today, and that this could create "lasting damage to the future of our art." According to Mark, todays typical viewer believes, or very soon will believe, that "everybody knows that all the magic on television is done with trick photography."

Larry Thornton does not share Marks concerns that camera trickery, disguised as legitimate conjuring, will necessarily cause permanent damage to the art.

Blades and tubes... two classic elements in many illusions. Its always a fun challenge to experiment with different configurations of dissecting a simple upright box. But blades dont have to be just flat, O-X-X-O explores a new alternate blade pattern, an X.

Dis is a popular term from hip-hop vernacular, meaning to disrespect or put down. Dis-Ease is a condition stemming from the often-false assumption that it is easy and funny to dis an audience member and get a laugh through audience abuse, cheap shots, put-down lines, and insulting jokes.

Wait. Listen. Do you hear that? Silence. Classical composer Claude Debussy explained the power of silence this way: "Music is the space between the notes." Thats a simple and profound statement. Musicians are not the only performers who might benefit from pausing to fully appreciate it.