The Right Way to Do Wrong Read Free Page B

marks; but the newspapers guyed him unmercifully, and published the true facts.

LIGHT ON THE SUBJECT OF JAILBREAKING AS DONE BY MY IMITATORS
    I AM INDUCED TO TAKE THIS STEP FOR THE manifest reason that the public of both hemispheres may, through ignorance of the real truth, give credence to the mendacious boasts and braggadocio of the horde of imitators who have sprung into existence with mushroom rapidity of growth, and equal flimsiness of vital fiber, and who, with amazing effrontery and pernicious falsity, seek to claim and hold the credit and honor, such as they may be, that belong to me. It is in the same spirit and for the same cogent reason, that I execute my present duty of duly setting forth my right to the title which I hold and the absolute pilfering of my name, fame, and the other emoluments of success by those others who advertise and rate themselves as “Handcuff Kings,” “Jail Breakers,” etc.,
ad libitum, ad nauseam
.
    That I have a horde of imitators may not be as well known as it will be to those who have the patience and the sense of fairness sufficiently developed to lead them to read this article through to its conclusion.
    Therefore, it will not be considered unbecoming of me to set forth here the details of my conception, execution, and performance of the Challenge Handcuffand Escape Act as presented by me at this time in the principal vaudeville and music hall theatres of Europe and America. And I trust also that I will not be deemed guilty of undue egoism, or of having an attack of “exaggerated ego,” to borrow a popular term growing out of the Thaw trial, if I assert that this act has proved to be the greatest drawing card and longest lived sensation that has ever been offered in the annals of the stage. This has been demonstrated by the record-breaking attendance in every theatre in which I have given the act, either in part or whole, and also by the duration of my term of engagement in the principal theatres among those in which I have been booked.
    â€œArt is long and life is short,” says the ancient poet.
    The stage and its people, in the light of history, make this a verity.
    As examples, take the famous Davenport Brothers, also the “Georgia Magnet,” also the “Bullet Proof Man,” etc. For the benefit of those who have not heard of the latter sensational attraction—which was indeed a great novelty for a limited time—I will explain that the man was a German who claimed to possess a coat that was impervious to bullets. He would don this coat and allow any one to shoot a bullet of any caliber at him. Alas! One day a marksman shot him below the coat, in the groin, and he eventually died from the wounds inflicted. His last request was that his beloved invention be buried with him. This, however, was not granted, for it was thought due to the world that such an invention should be made known. The coat, on being ripped open, was found stuffed or padded with powdered glass.
    Returning to the subject of my own career, I asserthere with all the positiveness I can command that I am the originator of the Challenge Handcuff Act, which consists in the artist’s inviting any person into the audience to submit handcuffs of his own from which the performer must release himself. And it is proper that I should add at this point that I do not claim to have conceived and originated the simple handcuff trick. Every novice in this line knows that it has been done for many years, or so far back, as the lawyers say, “that memory runneth not to the contrary.”
    French historians of the stage show that as far back as early 1700, La Tude performed it. Pinetti did chain releases in 1780, and other modern magicians have had it in their programs ever since 1825. The Sr. Bologna, instructor of John Henry Anderson, made a small trick out of it. Anderson placed it among his repertoire the second time he came to America in 1861 and when exposing the