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

24. THE TRIPLE DEAL.

Take any twenty-one cards, and ask some person to choose one from them. Lay them out in three heaps, and ask the person who took the card in which heap it is. You may turn your back while he searches. Gather them up and put that heap between the other two. Do this twice more, and the chosen card will always be the eleventh from the top.

25. THE QUADRUPLE DEAL.

This is a variation of the preceding. Take twenty-four cards, and lay them in four heaps. Act as in No. 24, putting the heap in which is the chosen card second. The tenth card will be the one thought of.

26. THE CARD DISCOVERED BY THE TOUCH OR SMELL.

Offer the long card, or any other that you thoroughly well know; and, as the person who has drawn it holds it in his hand, pretend to feel the pips or figures on the under side with your fore finger, or smell it, and then sagaciously declare what card it is.

If it be the long card, you may give the pack to the person who drew it, and allow him either to replace it or not. Then take the pack, and feel whether it be there or not; shuffle the cards in a careless manner, and without looking at it, decide accordingly.

27. THE INGENIOUS CONFEDERACY.

Lay sixteen cards on the table, in four divisions, four cards in each, with their faces upwards. You then state that you will leave the room, and, on your return, will name any one card which may have been touched in your absence, on one of the company (your confederate) pointing out a passage from any author to be read to you, on your return, by any person present. To perform this trick, the cards should be placed in the order in which they appear in the cut inserted on the next page, you previously making your confederate acquainted with your mode of proceeding, which is thus: The cards are supposed to be divided into four classes, as A, B, C, D; you likewise agree to class everything in the world under the four denominations of biped, quadruped, vegetable, and mineral: class A stands for bipeds, B for quadrupeds, C for vegetables, and D for minerals. Each class must now be subdivided in the same manner: in class A, No. 1 is the biped, 2 the quadruped, 3 the vegetable, and 4 the mineral; and so with the other classes. When performing the trick, your confederate must take care to select an appropriate passage. For example, we will suppose the card No. 4 to have been touched, and that a volume of Moore having been presented to your confederate to select from, he gives the following lines to be read:

"Breathes there the slave so lowly,