Modern Magic: A Practical Treatise on the Art of Conjuring

by Professor Hoffmann

Fig. 112.

Fig. 113.

These preparations having been duly made beforehand, you come forward with a small shawl, or large handkerchief, the tube, and the second plume. Laying the tube and plume upon the table, you request the audience to satisfy themselves that the shawl contains nothing. You then ask some one to step forward and take care of the shawl, which you meanwhile carelessly throw over your left hand, immediately after taking hold of its centre with your right, as before described, and drawing the left arm away. It is needless to remark, to those who have followed the explanation of the last trick, that the hidden plume is thereby brought under the shawl, though, being held by the loop of ribbon, there is nothing to betray its presence. You hand the shawl in this condition to the person who has volunteered to hold it, requesting him to keep it at arm’s length, still hanging down. Next taking up the tube, you open it at the plain or unprepared end, and holding it mouth downwards, show that it is (apparently) empty; then ostentatiously place the plume therein, and put the cap on.

In returning to your table you take the opportunity to reverse the tube, and to lay it down in such a manner that the opposite end (i.e., that with the false top) may be turned towards the audience. Some performers do this by letting the tube fall, as if by accident, but this is, in our opinion, a clumsy and inartistic proceeding. By gesticulating a little with the tube, in announcing what you are about to do, so that the audience may, little by little, become less certain as to which end you have just opened, and by carelessly transferring the tube from the one hand to the other just as you lay it on the table, you may make the change with scarcely a chance of detection, even by the keenest observer. You then say, “I shall now, ladies and gentlemen, make the plume which you have just seen me place in this tube travel into the shawl which that gentleman is holding, while the tube will be completely filled with objects of interest for the juvenile spectators.” Here you may possibly hear, or if not, you pretend to hear, a murmur to the effect that the feather has already left the tube. “Pardon me,” you say, “the plume has not yet left the tube, neither will it do so until I give the command,” and so saying, you take off the cap, leaving on the false top. The audience see the little bit of feather within, which they naturally take to be the end of the genuine plume. Again you replace the cap; and after going through some appropriate magical ceremony, again remove it, but this time carrying off the false top with it. (It should have been mentioned that the tube is japanned in such manner that the eye cannot detect any difference whether the false top is on or off.) Placing the cap, with the false top within it, on the table, you come forward and pour the sweets from the tube, while the shawl is on examination found to contain the plume.

Some performers, for the purpose of this trick, use a tube with a false top, as above described, but open from end to end, without the diagonal partition above mentioned. Before placing the plume in the tube, which they do standing behind the table, they secretly remove the cap at the lower end, and allow the plume to fall through on the servante, where it remains. In this case, there is no production of sweets, but the plume having been produced from the shawl, the performer removes both caps, and hands the empty tube for examination.

The Magic Laundry.—There is very little brilliancy, either of invention or of manipulation, in this trick, but it is nevertheless generally very well received.

The performer requests the loan of half-a-dozen handkerchiefs, taking care to accept white handkerchiefs only. These he collects in a wooden box, having somewhat the appearance of a good-sized tea caddy. Having got the required number, he places the box upon his table, and invites the attention of the audience to an ordinary tin or wooden pail. This he fills with water, and placing it in front of the stage, takes the handkerchiefs out of the box, and drops them in, stirring them about with his wand; and making as much fun as he can by his pretended anxiety that they shall be thoroughly washed. Having kept this up as long as the audience appear to be amused thereby, he wrings out the handkerchiefs one by one, and throws them into a little shallow metal tub or pan (japanned, and about four inches in depth), which his assistant at this moment brings forward for that purpose, together with a cover after the manner of a saucepan-lid, and a pistol, both of which he places carelessly on the table. Having placed the handkerchiefs in this little tub, the performer announces that having washed them, he will now proceed to dry them, for which purpose he pours over them a little spirits of wine, to which he sets fire. After letting them blaze for a moment or two he claps on the cover. “Your handkerchiefs are now dried, ladies and gentlemen,” he says, “but I have still to fold and iron them. It does not take very long, as you will see.” Taking up the pistol, he fires at the tub, and immediately removing the cover, comes forward to the audience, and requests them to identify their handkerchiefs, which are seen neatly folded, and apparently just washed and ironed, within it.

The intelligent reader will have already guessed that the trick depends upon a substitution of handkerchiefs. The box in which the genuine handkerchiefs are received has within it a moveable flap, between which and the back of the box the substitutes are placed. When the required number has been collected, this flap is let fall, releasing the substitute handkerchiefs, and at the same time covering the genuine ones. The substitutes having been dropped into the pail of water, the assistant carries off the box, and behind the scenes damps and folds the borrowed handkerchiefs, pressing them flat with a hot iron, if available; if not, with a cold one. The tub or pan which is used for the conclusion of the trick has an inner lining of such a size as to fit tightly within it, but about an inch less in depth. The lid again fits within this after the manner of a saucepan lid, but not quite so tightly as the lining itself fits within the outer pan. The folded handkerchiefs are placed within this lining, and the lid placed on, or rather in it—the two together as brought forward having the appearance of a lid only. When the performer claps the lid on the pan, the lining is thereby introduced, but when he again removes it, the lining is left in, exposing the folded handkerchiefs, while the substitutes remain concealed between the true and false bottoms of the pan.

The performer, of necessity, accepts white handkerchiefs only, as a coloured one would betray the secret, from the absence of its “double” among the substitutes. Some performers, in order to obviate the suspicion which might be suggested by an evident preference of white handkerchiefs, arrange that a coloured one, of which they possess a duplicate, shall be offered by a confederate among the audience. This certainly heightens the effect of the trick, as it seems to negative the idea of substitution, and though in general we deprecate, as belonging to a low class of art, the employment of confederates, this is just the case in which the use of such an expedient may for once be deemed admissible.