A CAMPING-OUT COOKING-STOVE.
Although the winter season is now well upon us, and its reigning king, Jack Frost, jealous if we but mention the “camp-fire,” has covered its very site with ice and snow, we need not fear incurring his displeasure by the following exhibition.
Procure an old silk hat if possible, and pass it among your audience for inspection. Have upon the stage, or at your end of the room, a table, with a drawer open at the back. In this drawer have a small cake in the tin in which it was baked. Let it be made in a patty-pan if convenient. Beside this cake have a small tin cup, which will fit rather tightly into the mouth of a china jar you have also provided. On the top of the table have an unlighted candle, the jar, which should be porcelain if possible, a basket containing a few eggs, a pitcher of water, some flour, and a box marked sugar. The hat, after having been examined, is returned to you; and the cake, along with the cup which is to receive the eggs and flour, are put into it. This is effected as follows: Take the cake and cup in your left hand, keeping it down behind the table, and your hat in the right hand; bring the cake and cup up to the edge, and immediately cover it with the hat, which you begin brushing with your right. Keep up a running discourse all the time, so that the movement will seem natural, and not be suspected. In a moment or two partly withdraw the left hand, and grasping the brim of the hat, turn it upside down upon the table. If the tin is not in a good position to catch the eggs and flour which you are to drop into it, palm a penny and pretend to find it in the hat, chiding your audience for carelessly overlooking it, remarking that although a useful thing to have, it is not exactly a proper ingredient for cake. Of course, while pretending to pick up the coin, you can arrange the tin cup on top of your cake in the middle of the hat. Be sure that it stands firm.
Now proceed to break one or more eggs, and drop the contents into the hat, taking especial care that they drop into the cup. Next throw in a spoonful of sugar, and then pour a few drops of water and one or two spoonfuls of flour into the jar, and stir well with a spoon. Pour the contents of the jar into the cup, and then, under pretense of draining the last drop into the hat, force the jar down over the cup, and work it around until the cup is well pushed up into the mouth of the jar. It is needless to add that you must pretend all the while that you are scraping or shaking out the mixture. The jar can now be taken out and carelessly placed behind the sugar-pail or any other object, to prevent the edge of the tin cup from being seen.
The trick is now completed, the only necessary thing to do is to keep up the acting until the cake is supposed to be finished.
First, stir it well by moving the spoon around quite actively in the hat; then light the candle, and, informing your audience that the cake is ready for baking, take the hat in one hand and hold it over the candle for a minute or two, occasionally glancing in to see if it is doing well.
In a short time announce that it is baked; and after blowing out the candle, take the cake from the hat, turn it out upon a plate, and placing a knife by its side, pass it to some one to cut, and politely request your friends to try it, and judge upon the efficacy of your camp-stove. If the hat was borrowed, return it with thanks to its owner, and congratulate him upon having such a useful article always on hand.
NECESSITY OF A SOBER COUNTENANCE.
In most, in fact all, of these exhibitions, it is absolutely necessary that one should keep a sober countenance while performing. No matter how hard your audience laugh, do not allow the shadow of a smile to flit across your face. If you do it will take away much of the effectiveness and half the mystery, from whatever you are doing.
I once had a young friend, a quick bright boy, who was very successful in palming, and in many of the other elements in sleight-of-hand tricks, but he had a ridiculous and unconquerable habit of laughing whenever his audience laughed, and, in fact, of sometimes anticipating the laugh, and commencing before his friends saw anything worth laughing about.