Page:Houdini - Miracle Mongers.djvu/254

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MIRACLE-MONGERS AND THEIR METHODS

brought along an antique slave iron, which he seemed to think would put an end to my public career on the spot, I manged to escape in less than three minutes. When I passed back his irons, he grinned at me and said, "I don't know how you did it, but you did!" and he shook me cordially by the hand.

Some twenty-six years ago I was on the bill with Mattie Lee Price, who, though less well known, was in many ways superior to either Miss Hurst or Miss Abbott. For a time she was a sensation of the highest order, for which thanks were largely due to the management of her husband, a wonderful lecturer and a thorough showman. I think his name was White. He "sold" the act as no other man has sold an act before or since.

We worked together at Kohl and Middleton's, Chicago, and the following week at Burton's Museum, Milwaukee; but when we made the next jump I found that White was not along. They had had a family squabble, the other apex of the triangle being a circus grafter who "shibbolethed" at some of the "brace games," which at that time had police