Modern Magic: A Practical Treatise on the Art of Conjuring

These apparently surprising effects are produced by very simple means. In the first place, the cards which rise from the pack are not those actually drawn, but duplicates of them, arranged beforehand. The performer ensures the corresponding cards being drawn by using a forcing pack, made up of repetitions of the three cards in question, which we will suppose to be the queen of spades, the ten of hearts, and the seven of diamonds, with some other single card at the bottom. The tin case, in the original form of the trick, has two compartments--the one to the front being large enough to hold a complete pack, but the hinder one adapted to contain six or eight cards only. In this hinder compartment are placed six cards, three of them being those which are intended to rise, and the other three indifferent cards. A black silk thread is fastened to the upper edge of the partition between the two compartments, and is thence brought under the foremost card (which is, say, the queen of spades), over the next (an indifferent card), under the third (the ten of hearts), over the fourth (an indifferent card), under the fifth (the seven of diamonds), over the sixth (an indifferent card), finally passing out through a minute hole at the bottom of the hinder compartment. If the thread be pulled, the three cards named will rise in succession, beginning with the hindmost--viz., the seven of diamonds. The three indifferent cards are put in as partitions, or fulcrums, for the thread to run over. If these partitions were omitted, the three chosen cards would rise all together.