Borrow a quarter or half-dollar from your audience, and ask the owner to place some mark upon it by which it may be identified. Wrap this in the corner of a handkerchief, and give it to some one to hold. Next take a ball of yarn, and having placed it in a tumbler, ask some other person in your audience to hold his hand over the top of the tumbler in such a way that the ball will be kept in place, and the yarn will run smoothly through the fingers. Hold one end of the yarn some distance from the tumbler, or near where the coin is held, and inform your audience that, as your dispatcher is in good working order, you will proceed to send the coin your friend has in his hand into the very center of the ball of yarn. Take the opposite corner of the handkerchief from the one holding the money in your right hand, and having counted one, two, three, command the coin to pass, at the same instant snatching the handkerchief from your friend’s hand. Next commence to unwind the ball, being careful to keep some distance from the tumbler while so doing.
As the yarn is nearing its end, the silver piece will drop upon the bottom of the tumbler, and nothing is left for you to do but to request the owner of it to step forward and see if it is the one he lent you.
In this, as in many of the tricks you have already learned, very little preparation is required. First, a coin of the same denomination as the one borrowed is sewed in a corner of the handkerchief. The ball is wound upon a stick of a particular shape, which is drawn out when the coin is to be substituted in its place. This stick should be about two and a half inches long, one and a quarter inches wide, and an eighth of an inch thick, rounded off at one end, and scraped until it is perfectly smooth.
When winding your ball, be careful to have the rounded end of the stick in the center of the ball, and the other end projecting slightly on one side.
After you have procured your coin, palmed it, and given the handkerchief containing the other into the hands of some person to hold, go for your ball, which should be at some distance from your audience, that you may have time to draw out the stick and insert the coin in its place, while you are walking back to the table upon which is your tumbler.
The trick is now done, but the audience must be kept ignorant of the fact, while your conversation and subsequent acting should shroud it in all the mystery possible.
THE TURKISH RING TRICK.
A few years ago I had the good fortune to see a famous magician perform. Many and wonderful were the things he did, and at times it seemed as if other than human skill must be aiding him in his craft.
Among others, he gave the following trick, which was as enthusiastically applauded as many of the others. It had for me no element of strangeness, as I was already initiated into its secret. Since it has ever been a favorite in the little amateur performances we have from time to time been in the habit of giving, I hope it may gain a wider popularity in the larger circle of friends to whom I am about to disclose it.