Modern Magic: A Practical Treatise on the Art of Conjuring

You now announce that you are about to make both coins pass into one handkerchief. Advancing to the person who holds the first handkerchief, you request him, still maintaining his hold, to remove his hand four or five inches below the coin, to give you room to operate. First showing that your hand is empty, you gently rub the substitute penny through the handkerchief between your finger and thumb, when, being only wrapped within a fold, it quickly falls into your hand. No one ever thinks of inquiring at this point whether it is the marked one or not. Taking it in the left hand, in position for Pass 4, you say to the person holding the second handkerchief “Having extracted this penny from the one handkerchief, I will now pass it into the other. I won’t even touch the handkerchief, but will simply take the coin in my hand, and say, ‘Pass!’ Will you be good enough, at the word ‘pass,’ to let go of the coin you are holding, but still keep hold of the handkerchief with the other hand.” Appearing, by Pass 4, to take the penny in the right hand, you open that hand with a quick motion towards the handkerchief, saying, “Pass!” The person holding the handkerchief looses his hold, as directed, when the two coins are heard to chink together, as though the second coin had just arrived in the handkerchief, and on examination they are, of course, found to be those marked. We may here describe another and still neater mode (the invention, we believe, of M. Robert-Houdin) of apparently wrapping a coin securely in a handkerchief, though really only covered by an outer fold.