Modern Magic: A Practical Treatise on the Art of Conjuring

PASS III. HAVING PLACED A BALL UNDER EACH OF THE END CUPS, TO MAKE THEM PASS SUCCESSIVELY UNDER THE MIDDLE CUP.--Before commencing this Pass, the performer, while placing the goblets in line, or otherwise engaging the attention of the audience with his left hand, takes from the servante with his right, and palms, a second ball. He continues, “For my next experiment, ladies and gentlemen, I shall require two balls. I need hardly remark that I could instantly supply myself from the wand; but there is a curious faculty about the balls themselves; they have a constant tendency to increase and multiply. For instance, without having recourse to the wand, I can instantly make this one ball into two” (he takes up the ball on the table in his left hand, taking care so to hold it that all may see that there is nothing else in his hand), “and the most curious part of the matter is, that though mathematicians insist that the whole is always greater than its part, in this case each of the parts will be found precisely equal to the whole.” As he speaks, he takes the ball from the left hand with the fingers of the right, at the same time dropping the palmed ball into the left hand, and now taking care to so hold his right hand as to show that it contains the one ball only. He then again replaces this ball in the palm of the left hand, where it lies side by side with the second ball. Rubbing the left palm with the second and third fingers of the right, with a circular motion, he gradually lifts the fingers, and shows the single ball apparently transformed into two, both of which he places on the table.