Modern Magic: A Practical Treatise on the Art of Conjuring

The reader, with his present knowledge, will probably have already conjectured the mode in which the bouquet is brought into the glass. It is beforehand placed at the left hand corner of the servante, the stem slanting upwards at an angle of about 45°. When the performer, standing at the left hand side of the table, drops the imaginary seed into the glass with his left hand, his right, holding the hat, drops for a moment to the level of the table, and clips between the second and third fingers the stem of the bouquet, when, by simply bending the fingers, the bouquet is brought into the hat after the manner of the cannon-ball. (See page 305.) When the hat is placed over the glass, the bouquet is naturally brought into the latter. We may here mention that there are bouquets of a special and rather ingenious construction, enabling the performer, in the act of producing the bouquet from a hat in the above or any similar trick, to cause it suddenly to expand to three or four times its original size. The bouquet is in this case made of artificial flowers, stitched on a framework forming a kind of miniature parasol, with a very short handle. The bouquet, when introduced into the hat, has a slightly conical shape, but the performer in withdrawing it puts up the parasol, so to speak, thereby spreading it to twelve or fourteen inches’ diameter.