Explanation.—The table is made with a hollow leg as usual, but with a larger aperture, closed with a double trap, through which a piston rod may push up a box deposited at its base.
The borrowed ring and handkerchief are put into the secret compartment of the bottle (see The Secret Out, and The Magician’s Own Book), where they remain until the bottle is taken out of the room. The wine-saturated handkerchief and ring put upon the sealed box are duplicated. When the assistant receives the bottle, he takes out the real ring and handkerchief, which latter he places in a box going into the casket, which has no bottom, the better for the two to be pushed up within the gueridon. The table has the double in its base when it is brought on the stage, and the duplicate handkerchief is fired at it. Consequently, you are sure to find the borrowed articles in the casket when it is opened.
THE 100 RINGS OF SMOKE.
Take six playing cards and turn up half an inch of the ends of each, the same side. With them form a hollow cube or box by the arrangement here depicted:
Fig. 43.
In the centre of one side cut out a small circle.
After filling this box with tobacco smoke, you can make a ring of it issue from the aperture by giving a tap to the opposite side, just as the pressure of the flexible bottom of an oil-can makes the fluid spurt out.
TO INTRODUCE CIGAR SMOKE INTO AN AIR-TIGHT VASE.
