Knoxville daily chronicle. [volume] (Knoxville, Tenn.) 1870-1882, 1882-02-07
ZAMLOCH'S ASSISTANT.
The TribuIations of a Magician.

When Zamloch, the popular magician,
was in San Francisco some time ago,
says the Laramie Boomerang, he was
short an assistant, and, as he had big
engagement at the Standard Theater, he
had to skirmish around and get one OF
short notice.
Fate threw in his way a man whom
we viii call Higgins, because that was
his name.
Higgins walked over to the magician's
house and went through several rehears
ais o. K, but at about qurter OF IN
the evening, and while the orchestra
was playing, he told Zamloeh that he
was SO near-sighted that he couldn't tell
across the street the difference between
a black tom cat and the solar eclipse.
This seemed to throw shade of sad
ness over the mind of the conjurer, for
the assistant in a performance of this
kind has got to be a man with every
sense on the alert, and with a touch at
once delicate and certain. 1t won't do
to go across the stage like blind mule,
falling over chairs and knocking choice
illusion gallery west every few minutes
The man who can't see ten feet with
any degree of accuracyis liable to mar the
magic Of choice performance, and the
audience will see that, instead of being
supernatural power, 1t is only club
footed assistant who ought to be skinning
mules at So week, who is doing the
business.
So the professor told Higgins that he
had better go down town and get him
pair of glasses, as he didn't want to ex-
pose all his expensive tricks to San
Francisco audience at regular prices OF
admission. He said he might want to
use these same tricks again some time
and he hated like blazes to give himself
dead away while he was doing SO well.
Just as the curtain rang.up, Higgins
came back with his goggles and Joy was
unconfned. He got along pretty well
till there was an illusion introduced in
which the magician took bird cage
and lot OF other furniture out of port
folio lying on the table, winding up by
picking live boy out of the volume.
The portfolio lay on an ordinary table,
and Zamloch had cut trap-door under
meath this, and provided Higgins, who
was under the stage, with short lad
der. Upon given signal the assistant
was to open the trap, and, showing up
the ladder, scoot the boy through the
table, the magician then taking him out
of the portfolio to slow music and deaf
ening applause.
Zamloch had taken out just before
four or five large Autographs, and stood
them up, carelessly like, against the
legs of the table, when he gave the sig
nal to his assistant to jab the boy
through the floor and table into the
portfolio.
Higgins, whose eyesight was about as
good as that of plaster cast of Milton,
rammed the ladder up against the litho-
graphs and knocked them down, SO that
the most attractive feature of the illu-
sion was the dissolving view of a
freckled-nosed boy shining up 81
ladder through the trap-door.
Most everybody in the theater seemed
pleased about something except Zam-
loch, Higgins and the boy. The utmost
good feeling seemed to reign throughout
the audience.
Zamloch, however, seemed to have a
preoccupied and far-away look. Hig-
gins, too, seemed to feel as though per-
haps he might have made a miss-ick
somehow.
The boy thought the spectators were
laughing a. the red flannel conclusion OF
his shirt, which in the excitement had
become disarranged, and was at that mo-
ment in perihelion with the disk of his
pantaloons,
Zamloch said he would conclude the
entertainment with mirth- provoking
illusion, in which he would ram full
grown man into a double-barreled shot
gun and shoot at mark. No one in
the audience apparently hankering for
the notoriety, the magician decided to
use Higgins.
Higgins has not been seen in Califor-
mia since then, and the ianitor, who
found large wart on the stage which he
said he could identify, thinks that there
has been foul play somewhere.-Boous
e7.ualQ.