Word: magic
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1920-1929
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...LIFE OF MAGIC-Howard Thurston -Dorrance...
Thurston is now Houdini. He describes his tricks, but never explains them. His most sensational "illusion" was chopping off a friend's head. Because women fainted he never repeated it. He is contemptuous of Oriental "magic." Out of three thousand fakirs he examined in India, not one had even heard of the rope trick. (A rope is thrown into the air, is mysteriously suspended while a boy climbs up it, disappears.) The easiest people to fool, says Thurston, are scientists, men-of-letters, psychologists. The hardest are lawyers and preachers because "they do not lose their poise" when invited...
...seen on a tennis court. They are of a type to keep an opponent away from the net as much as possible and simply wear him down. On the defense he is if anything faster than Cochet and his endurance is little short of marvelous. Whether he has magic touch which seems to characterize the Frenchman's play is not sure; he has not met enough worthy opposition; perhaps he would fall as other's have before the defense that is an offense, before the steady brillance and brilliant steadiness of the master of the amateur courts. BY TIME...
...Baker have raised an edifice surpassing the dreams of those who assisted in its modest beginning. Indeed, to an outside observer, it seems to be an Aladdin-like creation--these stately buildings arising overnight from a swamp, this provision of every imaginable facility. And truly there has been a magic at work, a creative imagination embodying in material forms a spiritual force. The first donors, backing an un- formulated project, the many early helpers among business men, led by Major Higginson, who in those initial years gave unflaggingly of time and counsel, would, we may imagine, look with amazement upon...
...Your fundamental purpose must be to determine the facts and find solution of a multitude of agricultural problems. ... All this cannot be accomplished by a magic wand or by an overnight action. . . . You are the representatives of organized agriculture itself. . . . I invest you with responsibility, authority and resources such as have never before been conferred by our government in assistance of any industry...