How to Behave and How to Amuse: A Handy Manual of Etiquette and Parlor Games

by George H. Sandison

The Adhesive Stick.

This feat has astonished crowds of spectators. It was one of the favorites of a late popular professor, and is now first promulgated. Before you perform it in public, you must practice it, until you are quite perfect, in private, for it would be a pity to spoil its effect by making a blunder in it. Begin by stating very seriously, what is a well-known fact, that if a bucket full of water be hurled round his head by a man, who is sufficiently strong, none of the water will fall out. If this be at all discredited, be prepared not only to support your assertion, but to carry the point still further by placing a tumbler full of any liquid in the inside of a broad hoop, which you hold in your hand by a small piece of string fixed to it, and twirling it round at your side. If you do this with velocity, although the tumbler, in the circles made by the hoop, is frequently quite bottom upward, it will neither fall from the hoop, nor will any of the water be spilt. To do this, however, requires even more practice than the trick which it prefaces; as, although there is no difficulty in it while the hoop is in rapid motion, yet there is some danger until you are rendered expert by practice, of the tumbler’s falling, when you begin to put the hoop in motion, and when you wish to stop it. If, therefore, you are not perfectly capable of doing it, state the fact only, which some or other of your auditors will most probably support, as it is pretty generally known. You now go on to say, that the air, under the water in the glass, when it is topsy-turvey, keeps it in; and that upon the same principle, if you can turn your hand, upon which you place a piece of thin wood (about one inch broad, and six inches long), sufficiently quick, although the back be uppermost, the air will actually keep the wood up against the palm of your hand, without any support. This they will be readily inclined to believe. They will, however, doubt your being possessed of sufficient manual dexterity to perform it quick enough.

We must now tell you how it is to be done:—Lay the piece of wood across the palm of your left hand, which keep wide open, with the thumb and all the fingers far apart, lest you be suspected of supporting the wood with them. Next, take your left wrist in your right hand, and grasp it tightly, for the purpose, as you state, of giving the hand more steadiness. Now, suddenly turn the back of your left hand uppermost, and, as your wrist moves in your right hand, stretch out the forefinger of your right hand, and as soon as the wood comes undermost, support it with such forefinger. You may now shake the hand, and, after a moment or two, suffer the wood to drop. It is two to one but the spectators will admit it to be produced by the action of the air, as you had previously stated, and try to do it themselves; but, of course, they must, unless you have performed the feat so awkwardly as to be discovered, fail in its performance. If you have no objection to reveal the secret, you can do it again, and, while they are gravely philosophizing upon it, suddenly lift up your hand and expose the trick. This will, doubtless, create much amusement. Observe that in doing this feat, you must keep your fingers so low, that no one can see the palm of your left hand; and move your finger so carefully, that its action may not be detected; and if it be not, you may rest satisfied that its absence from round the wrist of the left hand will not be discovered, some of the fingers being naturally supposed to be under the coat; so that, if the spectators only see two or even one, they will imagine the others are beneath the cuff. There is one other observation necessary before we conclude; it is this, when you have turned your hand over, do not keep the stick too long upheld, lest the spectators should take hold of your hands, and discover the trick; before their astonishment has ceased, adroitly remove your forefinger, and suffer the stick to fall to the ground.

The Magic Thread.

Take two pieces of thread, one foot in length each; roll one of them round, like a small pea, which put between your left forefinger and thumb. Now, hold the other out at length, between the forefinger and thumb of each hand; then let some one cut the same asunder in the middle; when that is done, put the tops of your two thumbs together, so that you may, with less suspicion, receive the thread which you hold in your right hand into your left, without opening your left finger and thumb. Then, holding these two pieces as you did before, let them be cut asunder in the middle also, and conveyed again as before, until they be very short; then roll all the ends together, and keep that ball of thread before the other in the left hand, and with a knife, thrust the same into a candle, where you may hold it until it be burnt to ashes; pull back the knife with your right hand, and leave the ashes, with the other ball, between your forefinger and thumb of your left hand, and with the two thumbs and forefingers together, rub the ashes, and at length, draw out that thread which has been all this time between your forefinger and thumb.

The Long Pudding.

The following is a famous feat among those mountebanks who travel the country with quack doctors. This pudding must be made of twelve or thirteen little tin hoops, so as to fall one through another, and little holes should be made at the biggest end, so that it may not hurt your mouth; hold it privately in your left hand, with the hole end uppermost, and, with your right hand, take a ball out of your pocket, and say, “if there be any old lady that is out of conceit with herself, because her neighbors deem her not so young as she would be thought, let her come to me, for this ball is a certain remedy;” then seem to put the ball into your left hand, but let it slip into your lap, and clap your pudding into your mouth, which will be thought to be the ball that you showed them; then decline your head, open your mouth, and the pudding will slip down to its full length; with your right hand you may strike it into your mouth again; after having done this three or four times, you may discharge it into your hand, and put it into your pocket without any suspicion, by making three or four wry faces after it, as though it had been too large for your throat.

The Changeable Watch.

Borrow a watch from any person in company, and request the whole to stand round you. Hold the watch up to the ear of the first in the circle, and command it to go; then demand his testimony to the fact. Remove it to the ear of the next, and enjoin it to stop; make the same request to that person, and so on throughout the entire party.

Explanation. You must take care, in borrowing the watch, that it be a good one, and goes well. Conceal in your hand a piece of loadstone which, so soon as you apply it to the watch, will occasion a suspension of the movements, which a subsequent shaking and withdrawing of the magnet will restore. For this purpose, keep the magnet in one hand and shift the watch alternately from one hand to the other.