On moving the hand away from the body, the mouse, which does not stir, seems to slide over the back of the hand, and, at the moment that it is about to fall on reaching the thumb, the right hand, passed beneath, arrives just in time to catch it near the little finger, whence, by the same movement as before, it seems to go toward the thumb.
In order to perform the experiment off-hand, it suffices to take a cork and carve it into the form of a mouse, then cut away the under part of the animal thus rough-shaped, so that it may lie perfectly flat, then make two ears out of cardboard, and a tail out of a piece of twine, and finally blacken the whole in the flame of a candle. After this, the black thread, terminating in a ball of soft wax or a pin hook, having been fixed to a button-hole, allow the spectators to examine the mouse, and, after it is returned to you, fix the thread, either by its ball of wax or its hook, to the front of the flat part of the rodent, which you may then cause to run as above described.
THE SAND FRAME TRICK.
The sand frame is a very ingeniously constructed little apparatus which is employed in different tricks of prestidigitation for causing the disappearance of a card, a photograph, a sealed letter, an answer written upon a sheet of paper, etc.
In appearance it is a simple, plush-covered frame, the back of which opens with a hinge behind a glass, which, at first sight, presents nothing peculiar.
THE SAND FRAME.
In reality, there are two glasses separated from each other by an interval of three millimeters. The lower side of the frame is hollow and forms a reservoir filled with very fine blue sand. In the interior the door is covered with blue paper of the same shade as the sand. The card, portrait, or letter that is subsequently to appear is placed in the frame in advance, but, in order to render it invisible, the latter is held vertically, the reservoir at the top. The sand then falls, and fills the space that separates the two glasses, and the blue surface thus formed behind the first glass seems to be the back of the frame. In order to cause the appearance of the concealed object, the frame is placed vertically, with the reservoir at the bottom, and covered with a silk handkerchief. In a few seconds the sand will have disappeared. The door that closes the back may be opened by a spectator and the frame shown close by, provided that it be held vertically in order to prevent the sand from appearing between the two glasses.