Arizona weekly enterprise., 1882-07-29
zAMLOCH's ASSISTANT.
The ,rribuIntIOns of a wagiciaIa

1he Ok S fbfA& ACAtAAAs
 When Zamloch, the popular magician, WAS in San Francisco some time ago, says the Laramie Boonlerang, he was short an assistant, and, as he had big engagement at the Standard Theater, he had to skirmish around and get one on short notice.
 Fate threw in his way a man whom we will call Higgins, because that was his name.
 Higgins walked over to the magician's house and went through several rehears als O. K, but at about qurter of in the evening, and while the orchestra was playing, he told Zamloch that he was so near-sis shted that he couldn't tell across the street the difference between black tom cat and the solar eclipse
 This seemed to thI Ow q shade of sad ness over the mind of the conjurer, for the assistant in @ performance of this kind has got to be a man with every sense on the alert, and with a touch at once delicate aud certain. It won't do to go across the stage like blind mule, falling over chairs and knocking a choice illusion gallery west every few minutes. The man who can't see ten feet with any degree of accuracyis IS liable to mar the magic ct a choice performance, and the audience will sec that, instead of being a supernatural power, it is only club footed assistant who ought to be skinning mules at S2aweek, who Is doing the | business.
 So the professor told Higgins that he had better go down town and get him Q pair of glasses, as he didn't want to ex- pose all hiH 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, ani Zamloch had cut trap door under meath this, and provided Higgins, who was under the stage, with a short lad. der. Upon given signal the assistant was to open the trap, and, showing uI 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 tho legs uf the table, when he gave the sig nal to his assistant to jab the bo,
 through the floor and table into thu
 portfolio.
 Higgins, whose eyesight was about a.
 good as that of a plaster cast of Milton rammed the ladder up against the litho : graphs and knocked them down, 80 thu the most attractive feature of the illu sion was the dissolviDg view of freckled-nosed boy shining up s ladder through the trap-door. Most everybody in the theater scene, pleased about something except .Zam loch, Higgins and the boy. The utmos l good feeling seemed to reign thronghou ? the audience.
 f Zamloch, however, seemed to have
 preoccupied and fur-away look. Hie I gins, too, seemed to feel as though pel
 haps he might have made a missile 2 somehow.
 The boy thought the spectators wer 6 laughing a. the red flannel conclusion (
 his shirt, which in the excitement ha ' become disarranged, and was at that nc
 ment in perihelion with the disk of hi
 pantaloons,
 :, Zamloch said he would conclude tn v entertainment with a mirth- -provokin
 illusion, in which he would ram a ful grown man into a double barreled sho gun and shoot at & mark. No one i 7 the audience apparently hankering fC the notoriety, the magician decided s use Higgins.
 n Higgins has not been seen ill Califo n mia since then, and the ianitor, wh It found large wart on the stage which | Il said he could identify, thinks that thel X has been foul play somewhere.-Boon II era'lg.