Modern Magic: A Practical Treatise on the Art of Conjuring

THE FLYING PLUME.--For this trick you require two plumes, as nearly as possible alike in appearance. To the stem of each should be attached a loop of string or ribbon, two or three inches in length. You must also have a japanned tin tube, of about twenty inches long, and three in diameter. On either end is fitted a cap, of about two inches in depth. One of these caps is perfectly plain, but within the other is an inner cap, made after the fashion of the middle compartment of the snuff-box vase (see page 217). The relative tightness of the inner and outer caps is such that, if in removing the outer one with the finger and thumb some slight degree of lateral pressure is exerted, it nips the inner cap, which comes off with it; but if the outer cap is removed without pressure, the inner cap remains on the tube, forming a false top to it. Within this inner cap, which is internally about an inch and a half deep, is glued a short end of a third plume, similar in colour and appearance to the two others. The interior of the tube is divided into two parts by a longitudinal division, also of tin, running diagonally nearly from end to end. The tube is thus divided into two wedge-shaped compartments, the cap at one end giving access to the one, and the cap at the other end to the other; each being large enough to contain a plume. (See Fig. 112, representing a section of the entire tube, and Fig. 113, giving a slightly enlarged view of the ends.) The tube is prepared beforehand by filling the compartment which is closed by the double cap with bonbons of various kinds; the other compartment being left empty. One of the plumes is concealed in the left sleeve of the performer, as in the last trick.