Fig. 33.
The learner should always use the double-handed pass, practising the single-handed ones in private, until he has attained that confidence in his skill which is afforded by frequent exhibitions before his friends, &c.
An easy, but somewhat clumsy, single-handed pass is depicted at [Fig. 33]. The third finger is inserted in the pack, and the top portion held between it and the middle finger, the rest of the pack being between the first finger and thumb. The top portion is then twisted round in a semi-circle in the direction of the arrow, and so brought beneath what was originally the lower one. The objection to this pass is that it disarranges the cards a good deal. The best way of avoiding this is to move the hand towards the table whilst making the pass, so that the edges of the cards can be set square at once on its surface. The motion must be made as if it were merely intended to place the pack upon the table.
The Diagonal Pass.
This is a very useful variety of the two-handed pass, by means of which cards placed simultaneously in different parts of the pack are at once brought together. Say, three cards have been selected by various spectators. The performer presents the pack to each in turn, requesting to have the card chosen placed in any portion of it. The chooser thereupon pushes the card between the others, which are not opened out by the performer, but merely presented in a compact body. The card is not permitted to be pushed quite home, the performer withdrawing the pack in time to prevent this. The pack is presented to the two other selectors of cards, and, when the three have all been placed in it, the performer apparently pushes them home with the right hand. What he actually does is thus described: Nip the three cards by the still protruding portions between the thumb and middle finger, across their width, and, in the act of pushing them into the pack, turn them obliquely sideways sufficiently to cause the right-hand top corners to project a quarter of an inch from the pack. The length of this projecting portion will be rather more than an inch, and is easily hidden from the spectators by means of the first and second fingers of the left hand. The top left-hand corner must be pushed down out of sight, and it will then be found that there are two considerable projections on the side and bottom of the pack. The right-hand one is hidden by the palm of the hand, and the lower one by the little finger. The pack, as it appears at this stage of the trick, held in the left hand (the right hand being removed for the sake of clearness), is shown at [Fig. 34].
Fig. 34.