(3) A glass ball—professedly crystal.
(4) An ordinary match-box, empty.
Instructions for the working of the trick will be most conveniently given step by step with the patter, which may run as follows:
“In the early days of Queen Victoria’s reign, when the oldest of us here present were good little boys or girls, and the rest were not born or thought of, there lived a celebrated scientific gentleman, called the Baron von Reichenbach. I am sorry to say he was a German, but he couldn’t help it. As his father and mother were Germans, he had to be one too. It shows how careful children ought to be in the choice of their parents. He invented a lot of useful things, among them creosote and paraffin. Neither of them smells very nice, but they don’t trouble about that in Germany.
“Besides being a great chemist, Von Thingany dabbled in what are called the occult sciences, and he claimed to have discovered a new force (a sort of magnetism, only different) and which, he declared, pervaded every thing in nature, especially crystal. Directed by a strong will, like his own, or mine, it would do all sorts of wonderful things. It seemed to me that such a force would come in very handy for magical purposes, and I set to work to invent it over again, and I have at any rate produced something very like it. The Baron called his force ‘odd,’ but he spelt it ‘od,’ which is odd too. You must judge for yourselves whether my force is the same as his, and you can spell it which way you like.
“I have only been able so far to work up a very small amount of the force, say about six mouse-power, so it won’t turn tables, or lift pianos. I can only get it, so far, to move a small weight like a florin or a half-dollar, and that only for a very short distance. For greater conveniences I have made this little tramway for the coin to perform upon. These wires which you see are not for it to travel on, but merely to get more equal distribution of the force. There is nothing out of the way about it, nor with this ball, except that it is crystal. Examine both as much as you please.”
The two articles are accordingly offered for inspection. The performer takes back the tramway in the left hand, holding it by one end in such manner that it is gripped in the fork of the thumb, leaving the thumb itself comparatively free. Taking back the ball with the right hand and remarking “Now to develop the force,” he rubs it on his left coat-sleeve, and strokes the surface of the tramway two or three times with it.
“Having now established a proper degree of ‘oddity’ between the tram and the crystal, I will ask for the loan of a half-dollar (or florin as the case may be) marked in any way the owner pleases.”
He replaces the ball on the table, and in the act of again turning to the audience gets hold of the waxed disc and draws it away from the body, holding it clipped between the ends of the first and second fingers, the left thumb pressing the thread against the cloth top of the tramway, and acting for the time being (and indeed throughout the trick) as a brake neutralising at pleasure the pull of the weight.
He receives the coin on the tramway; then picking it up with the right hand, makes some observation as to the mark, meanwhile pressing the waxed side of the disc against it, then replacing it, disc down, in the middle of the tramway.