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From the INTRODUCTION. I doubt whether I shall ever forget the first time I saw Robert Heller, charming entertainer. It was sometime in the early sixties, at the Chinese Assembly Rooms, New York, his first appearance, an invitation to the press. He was almost unheard of. His advance agent, John Hall Wilton, who brought Anderson, the Wizard of the North, to this country, believing that Heller would make a more favorable impression as a Frenchman, persuaded him, clever mimic that he was, to affect a foreign accent. This he did for a while, but soon gave it up on the plea that he had been long enough in the country to learn the language. His opening tricks were nothing surprising, but when he reached his Second Sight, which was then new, at least to our people, his reputation was made. His audience was made up, in great part, of bright newspaper men, who set their wits to work to solve the secret of that clever trick. Many were the guesses till John Savage, who figured, years after in this country and in France as the head center of the Fenian Brotherhood, and that night represented the New York Tribune, started up, excitable Irishman that he was exclaiming in a loud voice, Ventriloquism, by Jove, and that was accepted by the majority of the audience as the answer to the puzzle. From that time to the present there has been a craving on a great part of the public to know the secret of this and similar tricks in which the performer appears to read the most hidden thoughts of his audience. Nor is this desire confined to conjurers or those with a liking for so-called magic. Personally I knew two highly cultivated men, one, Richard Watson Gilder, afterward editor-in-chief of the Century Magazine, who with a boon companion, a reverend gentleman known for his erudition and culture, repeatedly visited Heller's entertainments in the vain attempt to solve the secret of Second Sight. At last comes the opportunity, for herein such men may gratify their curiosity by learning the mystery of mind-reading, crystal gazing, telepathy, thought-transference, and the thousand-and-one occult matters which unprincipled schemers have attempted to foist on a gullible public. All is laid bare in this volume, written in plain understandable language, so that he who runs may read.

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