HARPER'S YOUNG PEOPLE.
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MAKING WILLOW WHISTLES.
[MIRTHFUL MAGIC.]
BY G. B. BARTLETT.
MIND-READING.
This curious trick, like most good ones, is very simple in plan, although some skill is required to perform it well. After a few learned remarks on the occult science of mind-reading, the performer requests each person in the room to write a word or short sentence on a slip of paper, and to place it in a hat which stands on the table. He then takes his seat behind the hat, and draws out one of the papers, and presses it against his forehead, covering it from view with the fingers of each hand, which touch each other. After anxious thought, he reads it, and proceeds to draw and read aloud each slip in turn, laying each one on the table behind the hat, until all have been taken out, when they are handed together to the company for examination.
This trick, when well performed, causes the greatest surprise and astonishment, and its manner of performance was for a long time kept secret. It consists in inventing a word for the first slip, and glancing at its true contents when laid on the table behind the hat. The words on the first paper are read for the second, which is glanced at also, and its contents read for the third, and so on until the last one has been placed on the forehead, in removing which it is concealed in the hand and dropped into a side pocket, or mixed with the rest, which are seldom examined carefully enough to discover its absence or that of the contents of the first slip.
This very easy and effective trick may be of use in showing the young how easy it is for seeming impossibilities to be performed, and thus to put them on their guard against being too easily deceived by the evidence of their own senses, or trusting too much to the skill of pretenders who promise to foretell future events, of which neither they nor their hearers can have the least knowledge.
IS HE ON THE STREET OR IN A SKATING RINK?
THAT IS WHAT THIS OLD GENTLEMAN WILL WANT TO KNOW IN ANOTHER SECOND.