The three names of flowers, or the flowers themselves, painted on a board, have the one to be selected somewhat prominent, and, with a little art, you can always induce a lady to mark the desired one. (See directions to “force a card,” in The Secret Out.)
THE TURNING SHEARS.
Take a large pair of scissors or shears in your hands, which you hold out, palms upwards. Hang them by their rings on the little fingers. Close the hands with a slight inclination towards the scissors, so that the finger tips only are in the rings, and the blade is supported on the inner fleshy part of the palms.
As you turn your closed hands, the scissors will turn, and on bringing the knuckles upward the point will be forward, and you can open and shut them freely.
THE SIMULACRUM.
Ladies and Gentlemen: One of the superstitions of the Middle Ages made it credible that if a person hating another bought of a regular magician an enchanted doll, resembling that object of enmity, any treatment of the representative, say, the insertion of pins into its wax, the twisting of its limbs, and so on, would be felt by the living being.
This was acting upon a person through his likeness.
On this principle I—Signor Hanchio Panchio, at your service—have succeeded in opening locks without going near them with the key.
I have a facsimile of my front door lock in my own study, and on hearing a knock I merely turn a key in the duplicate lock, when the door flies open so mysteriously that the visitor believes the agent an electric medium of mine.