Modern Magic: A Practical Treatise on the Art of Conjuring

In returning to your table you take the opportunity to reverse the tube, and to lay it down in such a manner that the opposite end (i.e., that with the false top) may be turned towards the audience. Some performers do this by letting the tube fall, as if by accident, but this is, in our opinion, a clumsy and inartistic proceeding. By gesticulating a little with the tube, in announcing what you are about to do, so that the audience may, little by little, become less certain as to which end you have just opened, and by carelessly transferring the tube from the one hand to the other just as you lay it on the table, you may make the change with scarcely a chance of detection, even by the keenest observer. You then say, “I shall now, ladies and gentlemen, make the plume which you have just seen me place in this tube travel into the shawl which that gentleman is holding, while the tube will be completely filled with objects of interest for the juvenile spectators.” Here you may possibly hear, or if not, you pretend to hear, a murmur to the effect that the feather has already left the tube. “Pardon me,” you say, “the plume has not yet left the tube, neither will it do so until I give the command,” and so saying, you take off the cap, leaving on the false top. The audience see the little bit of feather within, which they naturally take to be the end of the genuine plume. Again you replace the cap; and after going through some appropriate magical ceremony, again remove it, but this time carrying off the false top with it. (It should have been mentioned that the tube is japanned in such manner that the eye cannot detect any difference whether the false top is on or off.) Placing the cap, with the false top within it, on the table, you come forward and pour the sweets from the tube, while the shawl is on examination found to contain the plume.