Page:Magic oracle, or, Conjuror's guide.pdf/8

 poured in in its liquid state, and before a fire, between the glasses, by the space left in the sides, and which you are then to close up. Wipe the glasses clean and hold them before the fire, to see that the composition will not run out at any part. Then fasten with gum a picture or print painted on very thin paper, with its face to one of the glasses, and if you like, you may fix the whole in a frame. While this mixture between the glasses is cold, the picture will be quite concealed, but become transparent when held to the fire, and as the composition cools it will gradually disappear.

Take a wine or porter bottle, and insert in the mouth a cork, with a needle in a perpendicular position. Then cut a nick in the face of another cork, in which fix a shilling, and into the same cork stick two common table forks, opposite to each other, with the handles inclining downwards; if the rim of the shilling be then placed upon the point of the needle, it may be turned round without any risk of falling off as the centre of gravity is below the centre of gravitation.

Take two farthings and two sixpences, and grind part of them away on one side only, so that they may be but half the common thickness; and observe, that they must be quite thin at the edge; then rivet a farthing and a sixpence together. Lay one of these double pieces, with the sixpence upwards, on the palm of your hand, at the bottom of your three first fingers, and lay the other piece, with the farthing upwards, in the like manner, in the other hand. Let the company take notice in which hand is the farthing, and in which is the sixpence. Then, as you shut your hands, you naturally turn the piece over, and when you open them again, the farthing and the sixpence will appear to have changed their places.

When a candle is burned so low as to leave a tolerably large wick, blow it out; a dense smoke, which is a compound of hydrogen and carbon, will immediately arise; then, if another candle or lighted taper be applied to the utmost verge of this smoke, a very strange phenomenon will take place; the flame of the lighted candle will be conveyed to that just blown out, as if it were borne on a cloud, or, more properly speaking, like a flash of lightning proceeding at a slow rate.