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

Put thirty grains of phosphorus into a bottle, which contains three or four ounces of water. Place the vessel over a lamp, and give it a boiling heat. Balls of fire will soon be seen to issue from the water, after the manner of an artificial fire-work, attended with the most beautiful coruscations.

TO MELT STEEL AS EASILY AS LEAD.

Make a piece of steel red in the fire, then hold it with a pair of pincers or tongs; take in the other hand a stick of brimstone, and touch the piece of steel with it. Immediately after their contact, you will see the steel melt and drop like a liquid.

TO TELL A LADY IF SHE IS IN LOVE.

Put into a phial some sulphuric ether, color it red with orchanet, then saturate the tincture with spermaceti. This preparation is solid ten degrees above freezing point, and melts and boils at twenty degrees. Place the phial which contains it in a lady's hand, and tell her that if in love, the solid mass will dissolve. In a few minutes the substance will become fluid.

AN EGG PUT INTO A PHIAL.

To accomplish this seemingly incredible act, requires the following preparation: You must take an egg and soak it in strong vinegar; and in process of time its shell will become quite soft, so that it may be extended lengthways without breaking; then insert it into the neck of a small bottle, and by pouring cold water upon it, it will reassume its former figure and hardness. This is really a complete curiosity, and baffles those who are not in the secret to find out how it is accomplished. If the vinegar used to saturate the egg is not sufficiently strong to produce the required softness of shell, add one teaspoonful of strong acetic acid to every two tablespoonfuls of vinegar. This will render the egg perfectly flexible, and of easy insertion into the bottle, which must then be filled with cold water.

TO ASTONISH A LARGE PARTY.

With some lycopodium, powder the surface of a large or small vessel of water; you may then challenge any one to drop a piece of money into the water, and that you will get it with the hand without wetting your skin. The lycopodium adheres to the hand, and prevents its contact with the water. A little shake of the hand, after the feat is over, will dislodge the powder.