Modern Magic: A Practical Treatise on the Art of Conjuring

THE MULTIPLICATION OF MONEY.--This is an old and favourite trick. It may be performed with shillings, pence, or florins, as may best suit your convenience. Whichever you use (we will suppose florins), you prepare for the trick by secretly palming in the right hand such number (say three) as you intend to magically add. Advancing to the audience, you beg the loan of ten or a dozen florins (the precise number is immaterial), at the same time requesting some one of the company to collect them, and bring them to you. He collects, we will suppose, twelve. You request him to count them openly upon the table, that all may be able to verify their number. This being done, you invite a second person also to step forward and assist. Picking up from the table the same number of coins as you have concealed in your palm, you give them to one of the two persons (whom we will call A) to hold. Then, taking up the remaining coins, you request the second person (whom we will call B) to take charge of them. When he holds out his hand to receive them, you let fall with them the palmed coins, so that he really receives twelve, though he believes that he has only nine. You make him close his hand, and hold it high above his head. You then ask A for the coins you entrusted to him. On his returning them to you, you take them between the second finger and thumb of the left hand, and pretend by the tourniquet to transfer them to the right, really getting rid of them at the earliest opportunity on the servante, or into one of your pochettes. The audience believe that the three coins are in your closed right hand. You announce that you are about to pass them invisibly into the hand of B, and after the necessary amount of magical gesture, you open your hand, and show that they have vanished; and B, on examining his stock, finds that the supposed nine have increased to twelve.