The conjuror always warns the company that his exhibitions of dexterity, are meant to delude the inattentive and untaught, so that he can do no harm and occasion no loss.
THE GARCIA SLIP, OR TOUR D’HOMBOURG.
You must remember the bottom card of the pack, which you hold face down in your left hand. Cover the cards with your right hand, held over them palm down, and run the cards one by one in under the right hand by means of the finger ends. One of the company is to lay his finger on any card he pleases and stop it. Let us call this one A.
On his doing so you secretly slip back the bottom card, and, opening the pack at the card A, get the bottom card up next under it. Now bring the lower portion to the top of the other, and show B as the bottom card.
The audience having fully taken note of it, you let them shuffle the cards as much as they please, for it little matters while you know what the card is.
On receiving the cards again, you spread them out on the table, face up, and readily point to the card B as if it were the card A which was really selected, but for which B was substituted.
TO TELL A CARD THOUGHT OF.
Take a pack containing fifty-two cards, then lay out one card, any card you see proper. Then divide the cards into three rows, by laying them down face upwards. When you have laid down three begin at the left and lay one upon the first, so continue to the right until you have laid out the fifty-one; at the same time request some person to think of a card. When they are laid out, ask which parcel the card is in; he tells you, place that parcel in the middle of the other. This done, lay them out again in three parcels; so continue to do for four times, and the card he thought of will be the twenty-sixth card.
TO GUESS THE SPOTS ON A CARD.
Take a whole pack, consisting of 52 cards, and desire some person in company to draw out any card, at pleasure, without showing it. Having assigned to the different cards their usual value, according to their spots, call the knave 11, the queen 12, and the king 13. Then add the spots of the first card to those of the second; the last sum to the third; and so on, always rejecting 13, and keeping the remainder to add to the following card. It may be readily seen that it is needless to reckon the kings, which are counted 13. If any spots remain at the last card, you must abstract them from 13, and the remainder will indicate the card that has been drawn: if 12 remains, it has been an ace; but if nothing remains, it has been a king.