Modern Magic: A Practical Treatise on the Art of Conjuring

There is a mode of performing the trick of the rising cards entirely without apparatus, and without the necessity of forcing particular cards. The performer in this case invites a person to draw a card, and when it is returned makes the pass to bring it to the top of the pack. He then makes a false shuffle, leaving it on the top, and offers the pack to a second person to draw. When he has done so, and before he replaces the card, the performer makes the pass to bring the card first drawn to the middle, so that the second card is placed upon it, and then again makes the pass to bring both together to the top. The process may be repeated with a third card. The three cards are thus left at the top of the pack, that last drawn being the outermost. The performer now asks each person, beginning with the last who drew, to name his card, and, holding the pack upright in his right hand, the thumb on one side, and the third and fourth fingers on the other, with the face of the pack to the audience (see Fig. 45), he causes the cards to rise one by one by pushing them up from the back by an alternate movement of the first and second fingers (which should previously be slightly moistened). If the face of the cards is held fairly to the spectators, it will be impossible for them to discover that the cards do not rise from the middle of the pack.