Take two sovereigns, or rather brass imitations, and grind them down until they are reduced to half their thickness. Do the same with two shillings, and fasten them accurately together, so that you will have two coins, each having one silver face, and one brass face. Take one of them in each hand, showing the silver side of one and the brass side of another, and offer to change them without moving your arms. Shut your hands, and the coins will turn over. Then, on opening them again, they will appear to have changed from one hand into the other.
23. THE VANISHED GROAT.
Put a little wax on the nail of the middle finger of the right hand, and take a fourpenny piece into the palm of the same hand. Close the hand, pressing the wax on the coin. Then rapidly open it, and the silver piece will adhere to the wax, and be quite concealed behind the finger when you hold your hand up.
24. THE RESTORED DOCUMENT.
Make a memorandum book, and line the cover with paper which has been previously rubbed with a mixture of lamp-black and oil. The paper must be loosely affixed, so that it can be raised up, and a leaf from the memorandum book placed under it. You must also make a flat box, having a double opening.
You now take a leaf out of the memorandum book, and ask some one to write a sentence, at the same time offering him the book to write upon. The pencil with which you furnish him is very hard, and he is forced to press upon the paper in order to mark. In so doing, the black is transferred by the pressure of the pencil from the blackened paper to the white leaf that has been placed under it, and of course makes an exact copy of the writing. You then give the man his document, put the memorandum book in your pocket, and go out of the room to fetch your box, which you have forgotten. While you are out of the room, you take out the leaf from under the black paper, and put it into one side of the flat box, and shut down the cover that hides it. You bring in the box, apologising for your absence, and give the box, open at the other side, into the writer’s hands. Tell him to burn his writing in a candle, and to place the ashes in the box. He does so, and closing the box, returns it to you. You then flourish about a little with the box, wave it in the air, bring it down with a bang on the table, strike it with your wand, and then, opening it as at first, you produce the duplicate leaf, which the writer acknowledges to be his own hand-writing. If the lamp-black should have come off and smeared the paper, you can account for it by observing that it is very difficult to get rid of all traces of the burning.
25. THE MAGIC RINGS.
Get a blacksmith to make a number of rings, about six or seven inches in diameter, as in the [cut]. A is made with a spring opening on one side, B is a set of two rings forged permanently within each other, C is a set of three rings formed in the same manner, and D D are two simple rings. The rings should be about the thickness of a rather large blacklead pencil.