Modern Magic: A Practical Treatise on the Art of Conjuring

In the latest and best form of the trick, the second compartment of the case is dispensed with, and the apparatus may be handed round for examination both before and after it is used. In this case three cards are forced and returned as already mentioned; but the performer, as he reaches his table, adroitly exchanges the forcing pack for another already prepared, and placed on the servante if a regular conjuring-table is used, or, if not, concealed behind some object on the table. This pack is prepared as follows:--The last six cards are arranged with the thread travelling in and out between them, just as the six cards in the hinder compartment were in the older form of the trick. A knot is made in the silk thread, which is hitched into a notch an eighth of an inch deep, made in the lower edge of the sixth card. The knot prevents the thread from slipping, but does not interfere with its being instantaneously detached when, the trick being over, you hand the whole apparatus, cards and all, to be examined. Some performers use no stand or pillar for the card-case, but fix it by a short plug projecting for that purpose on its under side, in a decanter of water on the table. Some, again, in order to exclude all apparent possibility of mechanical aid, fasten it on the top of a common broomstick, fixed in the floor of the stage, and broken over the performer’s knee at the conclusion of the trick. To our own taste, the trick is best performed without any special card-case whatever, the pack being placed in an ordinary glass goblet with upright sides, first handed round to the audience for inspection. It is here absolutely self-evident that the glass can give no mechanical assistance; and as the audience know nothing of the exchange of the packs, the immediate rising of the cards at the word of command appears little short of miraculous.