The Magician's Own Book, or, the Whole Art of Conjuring / Being a complete hand-book of parlor magic, and containing over one thousand optical, chemical, mechanical, magnetical, and magical experiments, amusing transmutations, astonishing sleights and subtleties, celebrated card deceptions, ingenious tricks with numbers, curious and entertaining puzzles, together with all the most noted tricks of modern performers.

by George Arnold; Frank Cahill

49. THE EGG AND BAG TRICK.

Get a chintz or cloth bag made double,[1] and between the two bags make six or seven pockets, each of which will hold an egg, and have an opening into the bag. Fill the pockets with eggs, and you are ready for the performance.

Hold the bag by the place where the eggs are, shake it, turn it inside out, and show that there is nothing in it. Then tell the spectators, that you are sure there is a hen in the bag. Put your head near the mouth of the bag, and make a clucking like a hen. You then say "I knew I was right, and she has laid an egg." So saying, you put your hand into the bag and take out one of the eggs, taking care to pretend to grope in one of the corners for it.

This is repeated until all the eggs but one are gone. You then, after taking out the last egg, say that some people think the eggs are not real, but you will convince them by ocular inspection. Saying this, you break the egg in a saucer with your right hand, and while the people are occupied with it, you drop the bag behind your table, or hang it on a hook out of sight, and take up another exactly like it, into which you have put a hen. "These are real eggs," you then say, "and if any one doubts their reality, they cannot doubt that this is a real hen." You then turn the bag upside down, and shake out the hen. If any one wishes to inspect that bag, he can do so without being much wiser for it.

50. THE DANCING EGG.

Send for some eggs, and take care to place among them one which has been emptied of its contents, and to which is fastened a long hair, at the other end of which is tied a crooked pin. Borrow a small stick from one of the spectators, and as you go behind your table contrive to hook the bent pin into your coat, passing it over the stick. Then place the egg on an inverted hat, and ask for some music, and directly it begins to sound, a slight and imperceptible depression or elevation of the stick will cause the egg to twist and roll about upon it as if it had life. You must be careful to turn gently round now and then, so as apparently to vary the distance of the egg from the body.

51. BELL AND SHOT.

Get a wooden bell made, so thick that there is a considerable space between the outer and inner surfaces, especially on the upper part of the bell. A hollow must be cut in this, and the handle so made, that when it is at rest, it is forced upwards by a spring, and draws up the round piece of wood to which the clapper chain is attached, and closes the aperture, as shown in the engraving.