TWO GOOD RING TRICKS
Take a common ring, about the size of a wedding-ring, and suspend it to the centre of your handkerchief by a piece of cotton four inches long. You can hold the handkerchief up by the corners with the ring hanging in front of you, and the latter will not be noticed. Then let the handkerchief fall over your left hand and the ring in your palm. Request the loan of a wedding-ring, and, having obtained one, put it under the handkerchief, drop it in your palm, and pick up the other ring, which push up in the centre of the handkerchief, requesting some one to hold it there. Next take a drinking-glass in your right hand and request the person to drop the ring in it and the handkerchief over it. Shake the glass, and the ring will be heard to rattle inside. Then stand the glass in the palm of your left hand with its bottom over the borrowed ring, which is concealed there. With your right hand pinch the centre of the handkerchief and lift it up quickly, of course, carrying the suspended ring with it, being very careful not to let the ring strike the glass. The glass is seen to be empty; lift it up and show the ring underneath. Say, “You see, the ring has passed through the bottom of the tumbler.”
A similar and a better trick can be performed with a short cane—say about eighteen inches long—instead of a glass. Commence as in the previous trick, and after you 48 have asked some one to hold the suspended ring through the handkerchief, show the cane, and, holding your left hand back upward, push it through the latter and the borrowed ring, and grasp the cane with, of course, the ring on it, in the centre. With your right hand take the ring and handkerchief from the person who holds them, and request him to take hold of each end of the cane. Now lower the handkerchief until it hides your left hand, when you must move the latter away, leaving the ring on the cane concealed by the handkerchief. Then let the suspended ring fall out of the handkerchief, and if it strikes the cane so much the better. Whip the handkerchief away, and the ring on the cane will be seen. How that ring could have got on the cane while the ends of the latter were being held will puzzle everybody. Pocket the handkerchief with the suspended ring at once, and don’t allow it to be examined.