Modern Magic: A Practical Treatise on the Art of Conjuring

The plug-box may be used in a variety of different ways--to vanish, reproduce, or exchange. For the first purpose, the coin to be got rid of is dropped into a. When the plug is inserted, and pressed home, the coin falls, with b, into the hand of the performer; and on the plug being again withdrawn, nothing is seen but the interior of d, which is of course empty. Where it is desired to use the box for the purpose of reproducing a coin, such coin is placed beforehand within d. The box is first shown empty, but has only to be closed and re-opened, and the coin is found within it. For exchanges, the substitute is placed in d, and the genuine coin in a. This latter falls out with the bottom, and the substitute is in due course discovered. A half-crown may thus be changed to a penny, or a sovereign to a shilling. But the chief use of the plug-box is as an auxiliary in those more important tricks in which the coin, apparently remaining up to the last moment in the spectator’s own possession, is suddenly made to appear in some quarter to which (if it had really so remained) it could not possibly have been transported by natural means. The performer in this case places a similar coin beforehand in d. Dropping, or allowing the owner to drop, the marked coin into a, he closes the box, which he shakes to prove that the coin is really there. Giving the box to some one to hold, he is then enabled, without exciting the smallest suspicion, to retire, and make what disposition he pleases of the marked coin, which he has thus got into his own possession. When he has completed his arrangements, he again takes the box, and, opening it, takes out the substitute, which the audience naturally believe to be the genuine coin; and getting rid of this by sleight-of-hand or otherwise, passes the coin (at that very moment, so far as the audience can judge) to the place where it is ultimately destined to be found.