ÆOLIAN HARP EXPERIMENT.
CHAPTER IV.
CONJURING TRICKS.
Having described some of the illusions which are produced with the aid of elaborate outfits, we now come to the more simple tricks which are produced with smaller and less expensive apparatus, and, sometimes, with no apparatus at all. In the old days the man of mystery appeared on the stage clad in a robe embroidered with cabalistic figures, the ample folds of which could well conceal a whole trunkful of paraphernalia. The table in the center of the stage was covered with a velvet cloth embroidered with silver, and its long folds, which reached the ground, suggested endless possibilities for concealment. All of these things have now passed away, and the modern magician appears clad in ordinary evening dress, which is beyond the suspicion of concealment. The furniture is all selected with special reference to the apparent impossibility of using it as a storeroom for objects which the prestidigitateur wishes to conceal. Some of the easiest and simplest of modern tricks that anyone with little or no practice can perform are very effective. The tricks in this chapter are far from being all which have been published in the Scientific American and the Scientific American Supplement, but they are believed to be the best which have been published in those journals.
TRICK WITH AN EGG AND A HANDKERCHIEF.
In this trick we have an egg in an egg-cup, which the prestidigitateur covers with a hat, and then he rolls a small silk handkerchief between his hands, as shown in [Fig. 1]. As soon as the handkerchief no longer appears externally, he opens his hands and shows the egg, which has invisibly left the place that it occupied under the hat, while the handkerchief has passed into the egg-cup ([Fig. 3]). We shall now explain how these invisible transfers are effected.
Two eggs, genuine and entire, were truly placed in plain view in a basket, but it was not one of those that served for the experiment. Behind the basket was placed a half shell, C, of wood ([Fig. 2]), painted white on the convex side, so as to represent the half of an egg, and on the concave side offering the same aspect as the interior of the egg-cup, A, to which it can be perfectly fitted in one direction or the other, as may be seen in the section in [Fig. 2]. It is this shell, inclosing a small handkerchief exactly like the first, that the prestidigitateur placed upon the egg-cup ([Fig. 2]). Then, while with the left hand he covered the whole with a hat with which he concealed the operation, he with the right hand quickly turned the shell upside down. The shell, therefore, by this means disappeared in the egg-cup, and the handkerchief, spreading out, assumed the appearance that it presents in [Fig. 3].