You shake the handkerchief and show that the cage has departed—a most effective illusion.
You pick up the mock die in the case, and, of course, the liberated bird flies away.
You lift the hat and push the solid die so as to make it fall.
Then you put into the hat a set of cups, Chinese lanterns, dolls, or other objects made for that purpose, to fit inside each other, and so take up little space—and express your astonishment that the owner should fill his hat with anything but brains.
THE COIN WAND.
Let your ebony wand be hollowed out at one end and bored clear through for a movable rod to work in it. In the space at the end have a half-crown cut into three pieces, thus—
Fig. 16.
with a simple mechanism worked by a spiral spring at the end of the rod, by which these three pieces, overlapping one another when drawn into the wand, unfold upon the same plane like a perfect coin when the spring is liberated.
You can by its means appear to draw a coin by the mere tap of your wand from any place whatever—the wall, a table, a person’s ear, nose, or pocket—and as often as desirable, since you pretend to remove the half-crown each time that it is shown, and actually show a real one in your hands.