Water Wizardry: A collection of tricks in which water is the chief agent

by Arthur Ainslie

If you use this method of exchanging one ordinary bowl for the faked bowl you should have a very small tray and a very small table; otherwise, you have no excuse for apparently putting one bowl behind the bag of rice. Why should you not put it at the side of the bag if there is room for it there? Inquisitive people ask themselves these questions sometimes. If you have a very small tray you naturally have to put the second bowl down on the only vacant spot on it—behind the bag of rice—but at the same moment you lift the bag.

Directly you have picked up the bag of rice with the left hand you pass it to the right, pick up the empty bowl with the left hand and pour some rice into it. Take care to let the audience see that rice, and nothing but rice, goes into the bowl. Then put the bag down, pick up the faked bowl, and present the rest of the trick in the way described.

This method is perfectly safe if you are performing on a small platform or stage, so that your table is raised, but it is not practical in a small room with the audience close to the table. If you wish to do the trick under those difficult conditions I suggest that you use very small bowls and have a box of rice in place of the bag. The exact size of the box will depend on the size of the bowls.

Dip both bowls (having first shown them to be empty) into the box and scoop up as much rice as you can get into them. Pour the rice back into the box. Do this two or three times, and while you are apparently doing the same thing for the third time bury the bowl which you have been holding in your right hand in the box of rice and bring up in its place the faked bowl, which was hidden in the box before the commencement of the trick. You must take care to remember the position of the faked bowl in the box.

In exchanging one bowl for another in this way your hand must not pause in its movement down into the box and up again. To make quite sure of getting the movement right practise in front of a looking-glass. First, dip the two bowls into the box of rice and scoop up the rice into both bowls. Remember just how your hands moved when you did that. Now start again, but this time exchange the bowl in your right hand for the faked bowl.

Fig. 9

Now tilt the rice back into the box, and the audience should be convinced that you have two empty bowls in your hands because both bowls are now upside down. Put the faked bowl, upside down, on the table. Take a little rice from the box with the right hand and let it fall into the empty bowl; continue doing this until you have filled the bowl. Then pick up the faked bowl and continue the trick in the way already described. You will find it convenient to close the lid of the box and to use the top of it as your table.

If brass bowls are used no celluloid disc is required, and it is not necessary to exchange one bowl for another; the secret of the trick lies in the preparation of one of the bowls, and yet, at the beginning of the trick, both bowls can be held with their interiors facing the audience. Thus, the second method is altogether different from the first.

The shape of the two brass bowls is shown in the illustration. The faked bowl has an inner lining fitted to it, with sufficient space between the lining and the bowl itself to hold a considerable quantity of water. The lining is of highly polished brass, like the rest of the bowl, and if it is kept "on the move" it can safely be shown to the audience. People think that the lining is really the interior of the bowl, and the fact that they can see inside both bowls helps to convince them that the bowls are unprepared.