Modern Magic: A Practical Treatise on the Art of Conjuring

Where the trick is performed before a very large audience, a single bottle would not contain sufficient liquor to answer all the demands upon it. In this case it is necessary to change the bottle, sometimes more than once in the course of the trick. This is most frequently done under cover of a chair or table; but where the trick is performed on the stage, a more elaborate expedient is sometimes employed. The bottle used has in this case an outer shell or casing of tin, open at the bottom, the actual receptacle for the liquids being within this. When the bottle is exhausted, the performer with apparent carelessness places it upon a small table, standing against the side scene, pending the arrival of more glasses, or under any other convenient pretext. The bottle is, in truth, placed immediately over a small round trap, the performer being guided as to its proper position by a couple of small pins projecting upwards from the surface of the table, against which pins he pushes the bottle. The moment it is so placed, the assistant behind the scenes, who has his eye to a hole in the partition, and his arm extended within the table, opens the trap, pulls down the empty interior of the bottle, and instantly replaces it with a full one, which he holds in readiness, and at the moment when the performer again grasps the bottle to continue the trick (and thereby furnishes the necessary resistance), pushes it sharply up into its place.