Page:Magic oracle, or, Conjuror's guide.pdf/15



Some amusement may be created among young people, by writing with common ink, a variety of questions, on different bits of paper, and adding a pertinent reply to each, written with nitro-muriate of gold. The collection is suffered to dry, and put aside till an opportunity offers for using them. When produced, the answers will be invisible; you desire different persons to select such questions as they may fancy, and take them home with them; you then promise, that if they are placed near the fire during the night, answers will appear beneath the questions in the morning; and such will be the fact, if the papers be put in any dry warm situation.

This is an excellent trick, and though quite simple, will be found to astonish an audience in which it is not known. Seat yourself at table or elsewhere, so as to have the whole of the company as much as possible in front of you. Take the pack of cards as it usually lies, and, in passing it under the table or behind you, steal a glance at the card which happens to be exposed; then, pretending to shuffle the cards, place the one you have seen back to back on the other side of the pack, and holding the cards firmly by the edges, raise your hand between you and the company, and show the card you have seen, telling at the same time, what it is. While doing so, observe which card is facing you (for you have now the whole pack facing you except the one card which is shown to the spectators,) pass them under the table again, and transfer the card which you have just seen to the other side of the pack, handling the cards as if shuffling them; again exhibit, and cry out the name of the card turned to the company, taking care to notice the card that faces yourself, which, change as before, and so on, by which means you may go over the whole pack, telling each card as it is exposed, without ever looking at the cards, except when they are held up between you and your spectators, and when they are anxiously looking at them themselves to see whether you are right or not.

Take twenty-one cards, and lay them down in three rows, with their faces upwards; i.e. when you have laid out three, begin again at the left hand, and lay one card upon the first,