pages: latestmagicbeing00hoff.pdf, 215
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latestmagicbeing00hoff.pdf | 215 | CONCERNING PATTER 199 cheerful. Geniality of manner is one of the most valuable assets of the conjurer. Above all, don't be nervous. You may say "I can't help it," but to a great extent you can. It is largely a matter of will. Start with the idea that all will go well, and it will probably do SO. On the other hand, a low- spirited conjurer always makes a low spirited audience. In any case, be sparing of puns, which have been deservedly described as the lowest form of wit. A single pun, if good enough (or bad enough) may win a laugh, and score to your credit, but to pep- per an audience with verbal shrapnel in the shape of puns is an outrage on good taste. Passing to the third function of patter, the mis- direction of attention in the course of a trick, we will assume that you have made a start in the right direction at the outset, by suggesting some fanciful explanation of the effect you intend to produce, SO that your audience, starting from wrong premises, do not know the points at which their too close observation would be inconvenient. The best way of diverting their attention at one of these critical points is obviously to attract it to some other direc- tion. A mere sentence, particularly if accom- panied by appropriate action, will suffice. Sup- posing, to take an elementary instance, that the performer desires to drop unseen into the profonde from his left hand some small article for which he has just deftly substituted a duplicate, now exhib- |