Modern Magic: A Practical Treatise on the Art of Conjuring

You now want to get rid of the card you have already shown, which is still at the bottom. To effect this without arousing suspicion, the best and easiest plan is to shuffle each time after drawing a card, not disturbing the arranged cards at the bottom, but concluding the shuffle by placing the bottom card, which is the one you desire to get rid of, on the top of the pack. Thus after each shuffle you are enabled to show a fresh bottom card, which, however, you slide back, and draw the next card (a queen) instead. Repeat this four times, when you will have all four queens on the table, though the audience imagine them to be the four cards they have just seen. In order to impress this more fully upon them, ask some one to repeat the names of the four cards. While the attention of the audience is thus occupied, you secretly exchange the pack you have been using for your forcing pack, and advancing to the audience say, “Now I shall ask some one to draw a card; and whatever card is drawn, I will, without even touching them, transform the four cards on the table to cards of the same value. Thus, if you draw a king they shall all become kings; if you draw a ten, they shall become tens, and so on. Now, choose your card, as deliberately as you please.” You spread the cards before the drawer, allowing him perfect freedom of choice, as, of course, whatever card he draws must necessarily be a queen of diamonds. You ask him to be good enough to say what the card he has drawn is, and on being told that it is a queen, you say, “Then, by virtue of my magic power, I order that the four cards now on the table change to queens. Pray observe that I do not meddle with them in any way. I merely touch each with my wand, so! Will some one kindly step forward, and bear witness that the change has really taken place.”