Modern Magic: A Practical Treatise on the Art of Conjuring

by Professor Hoffmann

Fig. 44.

The Rising Cards (La Houlette).—Several Cards having been drawn, returned, and Shuffled, to make them rise spontaneously from the Pack.—This is one of the best of card tricks. The performer advances, pack in hand, to the company. He invites three persons each to draw a card. The cards having been drawn, they are replaced in different parts of the pack, which is thoroughly shuffled. The performer then places the pack in a tin box or case, just large enough to hold it in an upright position. This case is generally in the form of a lyre, open in front and at the top, and supported on a shaft or pillar, twelve or fifteen inches high (see [Fig. 44]). He then asks each person in succession to call for his card, which is forthwith seen to rise slowly from the pack, without any visible assistance, the performer standing quite apart.

The ingenuity of different professors has added little embellishments of a humorous character. For instance, the performer may remark, addressing one of the persons who drew, “I will not even ask the name of your card, sir. You have only to say, ‘I command the card I drew to appear,’ and you will be obeyed.” He does so, but no effect is produced; the cards remain obstinately motionless. The command is repeated, but with the same result. The performer feigns embarrassment, and says, “I must really apologize for the disobedience of the cards. I cannot tell how it is; they never behaved in this way before. I am afraid I must ask you to name the card, after all, when I will try my own authority.” The card proves to have been a queen, say the queen of spades. “Oh,” the performer says, “that quite explains it. Queens are not accustomed to be ordered about in such a peremptory manner. If we try again in becoming language, I dare say we shall be more successful. Let us try the experiment. Say, ‘Will your Majesty oblige the company by appearing?’” Thus propitiated, the card rises instantly. Occasionally a knave is one of the cards drawn, and, when summoned, scandalizes the performer by appearing feet foremost. He is appropriately rebuked, and thrust down again by the professor, upon which he immediately reappears in a proper attitude. Sometimes a card, after coming up half way, begins to retire again, but at the command of the performer starts afresh, and rises completely out of the pack.

These apparently surprising effects are produced by very simple means. In the first place, the cards which rise from the pack are not those actually drawn, but duplicates of them, arranged beforehand. The performer ensures the corresponding cards being drawn by using a forcing pack, made up of repetitions of the three cards in question, which we will suppose to be the queen of spades, the ten of hearts, and the seven of diamonds, with some other single card at the bottom. The tin case, in the original form of the trick, has two compartments—the one to the front being large enough to hold a complete pack, but the hinder one adapted to contain six or eight cards only. In this hinder compartment are placed six cards, three of them being those which are intended to rise, and the other three indifferent cards. A black silk thread is fastened to the upper edge of the partition between the two compartments, and is thence brought under the foremost card (which is, say, the queen of spades), over the next (an indifferent card), under the third (the ten of hearts), over the fourth (an indifferent card), under the fifth (the seven of diamonds), over the sixth (an indifferent card), finally passing out through a minute hole at the bottom of the hinder compartment. If the thread be pulled, the three cards named will rise in succession, beginning with the hindmost—viz., the seven of diamonds. The three indifferent cards are put in as partitions, or fulcrums, for the thread to run over. If these partitions were omitted, the three chosen cards would rise all together.

The thread may be drawn in various ways. Sometimes this is done by the performer himself, standing behind or beside the table. Another plan is to have the thread attached to a small cylindrical weight within the pillar, which is made hollow, and filled with sand. The weight rests on the sand until the operator desires the cards to rise, when, by moving a trigger at the foot of the pillar, he opens a valve, which allows the sand to trickle slowly down into a cavity at the base; and the weight, being thus deprived of its support, gradually sinks down, and pulls the thread. (The pillar in this case is made about two feet high, as the weight must necessarily travel six times the length of a card.) Others, again, draw the thread by means of a clockwork arrangement in the table, or in the pillar itself, answering the same purpose as the sand and weights. The arrangement which we ourselves prefer, where practicable, is to have the thread drawn by an assistant, who may either be placed behind a screen, or may even stand in full view of the audience, so long as he is at some little distance from the table. The silk thread is quite invisible, if only you have a tolerably dark background. The only portion as to which you need feel any anxiety is that immediately connected with the cards. To conceal this it is well, if you use a special table, to have a small hole bored in the top, through which the thread may pass. The card-stand being placed immediately in front of the hole, the thread will pass perpendicularly downward for the first portion of its length, and will thus be concealed behind the pillar. In default of a hole, a ring of bent wire attached to the table will answer the same purpose. The great advantage of having the thread pulled by a living person instead of a mechanical power is, that you can take your own time in the performance of the trick; whereas, if you use a weight or clockwork, there is always a danger of a card beginning to rise before you have called for it, or possibly not rising at all—either contingency being rather embarrassing.

In the latest and best form of the trick, the second compartment of the case is dispensed with, and the apparatus may be handed round for examination both before and after it is used. In this case three cards are forced and returned as already mentioned; but the performer, as he reaches his table, adroitly exchanges the forcing pack for another already prepared, and placed on the servante if a regular conjuring-table is used, or, if not, concealed behind some object on the table. This pack is prepared as follows:—The last six cards are arranged with the thread travelling in and out between them, just as the six cards in the hinder compartment were in the older form of the trick. A knot is made in the silk thread, which is hitched into a notch an eighth of an inch deep, made in the lower edge of the sixth card. The knot prevents the thread from slipping, but does not interfere with its being instantaneously detached when, the trick being over, you hand the whole apparatus, cards and all, to be examined.

Some performers use no stand or pillar for the card-case, but fix it by a short plug projecting for that purpose on its under side, in a decanter of water on the table. Some, again, in order to exclude all apparent possibility of mechanical aid, fasten it on the top of a common broomstick, fixed in the floor of the stage, and broken over the performer’s knee at the conclusion of the trick. To our own taste, the trick is best performed without any special card-case whatever, the pack being placed in an ordinary glass goblet with upright sides, first handed round to the audience for inspection. It is here absolutely self-evident that the glass can give no mechanical assistance; and as the audience know nothing of the exchange of the packs, the immediate rising of the cards at the word of command appears little short of miraculous.

It only remains to explain the modus operandi of the little variations before alluded to. The offended dignity of the queen, declining to appear when summoned in too cavalier a manner, is accounted for by the fact that the performer or his assistant refrains from pulling the thread until the offender has adopted a more respectful tone. The phenomenon of the knave first appearing feet foremost, and then invisibly turning himself right end uppermost, is produced by the use of two knaves, the first (i.e., hindmost) being placed upside down, and the second (with an indifferent card between) in its proper position. When the performer pushes the first knave down again, with a request that it will rise in a more becoming attitude, he thrusts it down, not as he appears to do, in the same place which it originally occupied, but among the loose cards forming the front portion of the pack, thus getting it out of the way, and allowing the thread to act on the second knave. It is hardly necessary to observe that, for producing this particular effect, the cards must be of the old-fashioned single-headed pattern. The alternate ascent and descent of a given card is produced by using a card at whose lower edge, between the back and front of the card, is inserted a slip of lead-foil. The card, so weighted, sinks down of itself as soon as the pull of the thread is relaxed, and may be thus made to rise and fall alternately, as often as the operator chooses, and finally, by a quick, sharp jerk, to jump right out of the pack.

Another very telling incident is the transformation of an eight to a seven, or a seven to a six. A seven of spades, say, has been one of the drawn cards, but when it is summoned an eight of spades appears. The performer apologizes for the mistake, and, giving the card a touch of his wand, shows it instantly transformed to a seven. This is effected by sticking (with a little bees’-wax) a loose spade pip in the appropriate position on an ordinary seven of spades. The performer takes out the supposed eight with one hand, and thence transfers it to the other. In so doing he draws off, with the hand which first held the card, the loose pip, and, holding the card face downwards, touches it with the wand, and shows that it has apparently changed to the card drawn.