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

by Arthur Ainslie

The average beginner usually despises a very easy trick, simply because it is easy. Maybe it is for that reason that one seldom hears of a young amateur including the "Wine and Water" trick in his repertoire. I once heard a young amateur state his objection to the trick.

"Oh, it's so obviously just a chemical experiment," he said.

He was wrong. If the trick is presented properly it will not be "just a chemical experiment" but a very entertaining little bit of magic—simple in its effect, and very short. The trick used to be in the repertoire of Mr. David Devant, and other notable magicians have performed it in public.

There are many ways of presenting the trick, but I do not think that anyone has ever beaten Mr. Devant's method, which I give now with his permission. The effect is so clear that the youngest child in the audience can follow it.

Standing in a row on a tray on the table are four tumblers and a small glass jug, with water in it. The conjurer picks up the jug in one hand, a glass in another, pours out a little water and returns it to the jug. Then he puts the glass down and pours a little water into each glass; the glasses should be about half full. The audience are—or should be—surprised to see that although the liquid in the first and third glasses is undoubtedly water, the second and fourth glasses contain wine, or ink, or stout, or whatever the conjurer is pleased to call it; it is a black fluid.

The conjurer puts the jug down and, taking up the first and second glasses, mixes the contents together, with the result that he gets one glass full of "wine"; he pours this into the jug and all the water in the jug is immediately turned into wine. The conjurer then mixes the contents of the third and fourth glasses together, and he gets a glass of clear water. Pouring this into the jug he causes all the "wine" in it to change at once into clear water. Thus, at the finish of the trick the conjurer returns to the point at which he started—with a jug of water and four empty glasses.

The whole secret is in the "doctoring" of the four glasses. The preparations must be made carefully, and when presenting it in a strange place it is always necessary to try it out beforehand, because the quantities of the chemicals used which are sufficient to work the trick in one district may be quite wrong for the water of another district.

The glasses are prepared in this way. The first contains a teaspoonful of a saturated solution of tannin; the second and fourth glasses contain a few drops of a saturated solution of perchloride of iron, known to some chemists as "steel drops"; the third glass contains a few drops of a saturated solution of oxalic acid.

The object of pouring water into the first glass and tipping it back into the jug is to mix the tannin with the water in the jug. Directly he has done this the conjurer must be brisk in his movements, because after the tannin has been put in the water soon becomes slightly cloudy.

The exact quantities of the chemicals required can only be determined by experiment. Having settled that matter the conjurer has only to carry out the instructions already given. The second and fourth glasses will then have "wine" in them, and the first and third water. The contents of the first and second mixed together will be "wine," and when poured into the jug will cause the water left in the jug to change into "wine." The oxalic acid in the third glass does the trick of taking all the colour out of the contents of the fourth glass, and when he has poured that into the jug the conjurer finishes, as he began, with a "jug of water."