Water from Waste Paper
For this trick you require two large aluminium drinking cups just alike. One of them is filled with water and is then closed with an india-rubber cap (procurable at any conjuring shop). Gummed on to this cap are little bits of newspaper. The cup is then hidden in a box of pieces of newspaper.
Come forward with the empty cup in your hands and fill it with the paper by dipping it into the box. Add a handful of paper with the left hand and then tip the lot back into the box. Repeat the movements. At the third attempt leave the empty cup hidden in the box of waste paper and get hold of the cup filled with water. Add a little more paper to the top of this cup with the left hand and then remove one or two pieces; this helps to convince the audience that the cup is really filled with loose bits of paper. Close the lid of the box and stand the cup on it. Cover the cup with a small thick silk handkerchief.
In removing the handkerchief you can easily "nip off" the rubber cover with the thumb, and you leave it hidden in the handkerchief while you pour the water out of the cup.
By having two boxes—or one larger one—the trick can be repeated, but it would not be advisable to produce water from both cups. Let the second production be a surprise. If you are performing to children you can have no better production than sweets, which, of course, you give away.
This trick is also performed with specially prepared cups with lids. The cups in the boxes are closed with other lids (flush with the top), and thus when they are brought up out of the boxes some loose paper is on the top of each of the secret lids and the cups appear to be full of paper. The "visible" lid is then put on to each cup, and when these lids are removed they bring away with them the secret lids and the little paper which was on the top of them. Then the real contents of the cups are produced.
Cotton Wool to Water
For this trick I use an old piece of apparatus known to conjurers as the "coffee vase," and I mention it here because my method of using it differs from that usually employed.
The vase is a tall, straight one on a foot; it is usually made of polished tin. There is a separate metal lining to this vase; this lining is of the shape shown in the illustration. It will be seen that the bottom of the lining does not come down to the bottom of the vase, and that the outside part of the lining goes over the outside of the vase and extends to the whole length of the vase. Therefore, it is impossible to tell, from looking at the outside of the vase, whether the lining is inside or whether the vase is what you say it is—an empty vase.
