Modern Magic: A Practical Treatise on the Art of Conjuring

A word of caution may here be desirable. These passes must by no means be regarded as being themselves tricks, but only as processes to be used in the performance of tricks. If the operator, after pretending to pass the coin, say, from the right hand to the left, and showing that it had vanished from the left hand, were to allow his audience to discover that it had all along remained in his right hand, they might admire the dexterity with which he had in this instance deceived their eyes, but they would henceforth guess half the secret of any trick in which palming was employed. If it is necessary immediately to reproduce the coin, the performer should do so by appearing to find it in the hair or whiskers of a spectator, or in any other place that may suit his purpose, remembering always to indicate beforehand that it has passed to such a place, thereby diverting the general attention from himself. As the coin is already in his hand, he has only to drop it to his finger-tips as the hand reaches the place he has named, in order, to all appearance, to take it from thence. Having given this little piece of advice as to the hand in which the coin actually is, we must add a few words more as to the hand in which it is not. Whenever you have (apparently) placed any article either in the closed hand, or in some piece of apparatus from which it is afterwards to disappear, you should not, as a rule, show that the article has departed from the spot where you have apparently placed it, without interposing some magical process, however slight, which may colourably account for its disappearance. A mere nothing will suffice--a touch of the wand, the pronouncing of a magic formula, the pressure of a finger; but in some form or other the ceremony should never be omitted. Thus, to take a very simple example, we will suppose that by means of Pass 1 you have apparently placed in the left hand a coin, which really remains in the palm of the right. If you at once open the left hand, and show that the coin is not there, the spectators will naturally jump to the correct explanation, viz., that you did not, in reality, put the coin there at all.