“3. Never tell a lie that you cannot stick to, and illustrate if necessary. You can always ward off an explanation for a few instants whilst you remove the chances of discovery, and you will find as you get on that you can boldly do the most outrageously transparent things coram populo, without being found out or observed.
“4. Your hands must always work together, never be easy with one hand and constrained with the other; unless you can by no other means distract the attention of some horribly sharp person from one hand, when an awkward movement of the other will often divert his undesired watchfulness.
“5. Cultivate the art of scoring off rude people, who ask awkward questions. If any one thinks he has discovered ‘the way it’s done’ (but not the right way), let him think so, and swagger his astuteness, and his desire to slip through to New Zealand will be all the greater when you prove him wrong. Sæpe interereunt aliis meditantes necem. If you are really found out beyond recovery, don’t try to carry it off; throw yourself at once on the generosity of the discoverer or discoverers, and ask him or her not to expose you; remember you are only an amateur, and not getting your living.
“6. Never go on an instant after you detect the least signs among the audience of ‘having had enough of it.’
“7. When doing anything quite harmless, make a great unostentatious parade of your innocence; your audience will be all the more ready to take you on trust when you are taking them in.
“8. Never perform a trick in public which you have not amply rehearsed in private.
“Your dress will of course, as a rule, be the ordinary evening dress, and unless you have a great reputation as a prestidigitateur, no alteration is required. However, a little pocket an inch deep, contrived in and hidden by the seam of the trousers just where the tips of the fingers fall when the hand is naturally lowered to the side is a great convenience for getting rid of small articles when palmed, or for producing them suddenly by the same means. Otherwise, the natural movement of getting at one’s handkerchief, &c., will answer the same purpose, if neatly and unostentatiously done. It is as well to turn up the coat-sleeves, for though they are never used in legerdemain, it is impossible to disabuse people of the notion that they are.
“These maxims (which are, after all, the chief art to be acquired by the amateur conjuror) having been digested, let us turn to the considerations of the principles and practice of the science of legerdemain. These may be summed up thus: Every conjuring trick or illusion, not involving the use of a stage, apparatus, and accomplices, is performed in, and has for its foundation one of three proceedings; these are, (1) The Palm, (2) The Pass, (3) The Slip, and the motive power of the trio is the same, and is expressed in one word, viz. ‘cheek.’
“1. Palming, is the art of holding in one hand any article (coin, card, &c.) unknown and unseen by the spectators, or of retaining in one hand anything which, by the ‘pass’ has apparently left it.