Crystal Gazing.
Choose a guest who is fairly dignified but ready to appreciate a joke even though the joke be on him. Tell him that to read his thoughts is really a simple matter if he will look into quiet waters and do just what you tell him to do. Be perfectly serious in all that you say, for if you act as though it is going to be something funny, you scare off the bravest guest ever entertained.
Take two glasses of water, full to the brim. You take a sip out of one and ask him to take one from the other. Then slowly move the glasses around in a circular motion two or three times. Ask your victim to kneel and to place both hands on the floor with fingers spread out to enable him to hold the glasses securely without spilling any water. Put a glass on each hand, very emphatically stating that for either you or him to spill even one drop of water is against the spirit of the proceeding. Make a real point of this, for subjects are always scared to death that you are going to throw water on them, and I can’t say that I’d appreciate that little bit of humor myself.
After the glasses are safely placed on his hands your conversation should run something like this: “Wait till that water quiets down and then look very intently into the glass on your right hand, the one out of which you drank. Then make a wish, a real one, not about something silly like the weather, but a wish that could come true before the end of the year. Don’t tell us what your wish is but tell us when you have made it, and almost at once I can tell you what your wish was and whether it will come true or not.”
That is the correct time for you to go to another and healthier part of the room. “Well, I’ve made my wish,” comes almost at once. Your reply is an indifferent, “Oh that’s all right. That doesn’t make any difference!” and you pay no more attention to his protests until the other guests have had their fill of the hilarious laughter that is inevitable at his ridiculous plight, whereupon you tell him that he is wishing you would take the water off his hands, and that his wish will come true!