[HOW MAGIC IS MADE.]
BY HENRY HATTON.
IV.
FIG. 1.
One of the best tricks of De Kolta is called, "The Miraculous Production of Flowers." It may be exhibited on the stage or in the drawing-room, and is equally effective in either place. The performer shows an umbrella from which the covering has been removed and its place supplied by multicolored ribbons, which go from rib to rib, leaving a space between. He then opens this umbrella, and stands it upside down on the stage, resting the ferrule end in a piece of metal tubing, which, in turn, is supported by a stand. He also shows two or three empty shallow wicker baskets, and a sheet of heavy brown paper. His arms being bared to prevent the possibility of anything being concealed in his sleeves, he folds, or rather twists, a sheet of paper into a cone or cornucopia. Every one knows this cone is empty, as they have seen it made, and yet the performer shakes from it enough flowers to fill not only the baskets, but also the inverted umbrella. Every once in a while, when the supply of flowers is apparently exhausted, the paper is opened and shown to be empty, and yet, when again rolled up, the flowers pour from it in as great volume as at first.
The flowers in this case are emphatically spring flowers, though it may be truthfully said that "the flowers that bloom in the spring have nothing to do with the case." They are made in a variety of shapes, but the most simple form is, to my thinking, the best, and any one can make them by following these instructions:
FIG 2.
Cut a number of pieces of red, blue, yellow, or pink tissue-paper of the shape shown in Fig. 2, and an equal number of that in Fig. 3. Fold them at the lines A A and B B, shown by the dotted lines, so that C and C and D and D come together. Then cut some flat thin spring steel, not highly tempered, into strips about one-eighth of an inch in width and from an inch and three-quarters to two inches and a quarter in length, according to the size of the "flower." The latter, for the drawing-room, should be about two and a half inches long and two inches at the widest part, while for the stage they are best when three and a quarter long and proportionately wide. The strips of steel must next be cut in two the longer way, until within about a quarter of an inch of one end, and these halves must be bent outward in opposite directions, so that they assume the position shown in Fig. 4.