Modern Magic: A Practical Treatise on the Art of Conjuring

Again he brings up the vase, apparently full as before, but really having only a mere layer of berries, of the depth of d, at the top. He now puts on the cover, the well in which again forces d and the superposed layer of coffee-berries down to make way for it, and causes the crook again to catch beneath the hollow of the foot. The same operation is now gone through with the vase whose well contains the sugar, and the box of white beans. The performer lastly takes from the third vase a handful of bran, which he scatters to show its genuineness, and then places the cover over it. The trick is now really completed. On removing the respective covers (taking care of course, first to turn the bayonet-catches in the right direction), the wells are released from the covers and locked to the vases, which are thus found full respectively of hot coffee and sugar, and, on removing the cover of the third vase, the bran is lifted off with it, and the milk is revealed. Some coffee vases, and more particularly those of French make, dispense with the bayonet-catch, replacing it by a peculiar arrangement inside the top of the cover. The upper edge of the well is slightly turned in all round, and the turning of the knob at the top of the cover causes three flat bolts or catches to shoot out circularly from the edges of a hollow disc, soldered to the top of the cover inside, and insert themselves under this projecting edge. (See Figs. 224, 225.) The mechanical arrangement by which this is effected is almost impossible to explain in writing, though it becomes readily intelligible upon an actual inspection of the apparatus, and will be understood without much difficulty after a slight study of the above diagrams, the arrow in each case indicating the direction in which the knob must be turned, in order to bring the bolts into the condition shown in the opposite diagram.