Скачать книгу

and effective sleights are inserted by special permission of the inventor, Professor Hellis, of No. 13, Silver Street, Kensington, one of the cleverest and most genial drawing-room performers of the day.

      To Get Sight of a Drawn Card.—The power of doing this is a sine quâ non for the conjuror. As already mentioned, even the most expert operator cannot be absolutely certain of “forcing” the card which he desires, and a novice is very likely indeed to find a wrong card occasionally drawn. It is therefore necessary to be provided with a remedy for such a contretemps. One mode of meeting the difficulty is to allow the card to be returned to the pack, make the pass to bring it to the top, and palm it, immediately giving the pack to be shuffled, and in so doing to get sight of the card, which remains in your own hand, and can in due time be reproduced in any way you please. (See Fig. 15.) For the present purpose, we assume that you do not desire to retain possession of the card, but merely wish to know its suit and value. These may be ascertained as follows:—

      Fig. 22.

      Second Method.—Proceed as above, but instead of opening the pack to get sight of the card, bring it secretly to the bottom by the pass, and offer the cards to be shuffled, holding them at the upper end between the thumb and first and second finger of the right hand, and slanting from you at an angle of 45°, as in Fig. 15. As the faces are towards you, you have a full view of the card. Even if it should suggest itself to the audience that you are able to see the bottom card, as they are not aware that the chosen card is now in that position, there is nothing to excite their suspicion.

      You may, by way of variety, instead of offering the cards to be shuffled, hold them in the right hand, and make the single-handed “ruffle” above described, at the same time turning their faces slightly towards yourself. You may effect the same object, even more simply, by the mere act of passing the pack from the one hand to the other, keeping the bottom card turned inwards as above.

      Fig. 23.

      Fig. 24. Fig. 25.

      Fig. 26.

      To “Turn Over” the Pack.—There are certain tricks (as, for instance, where you have undertaken to produce a given card at a particular number in the pack) for which it is necessary to deal a certain number of cards from the top, and then (without the spectator’s knowledge) to continue the deal from the opposite end of the pack. As a necessary preliminary, you must “face” the cards—i.e., bring the upper and lower portions face to face. This you have already been taught to do by means of the pass. Whichever way the pack is turned, it will now, of course, show backs only. Take the pack flat in the left hand, the fingers clipping it rather tightly, but without the aid of the thumb. Pass the thumb underneath, and with the ball of the thumb press the pack smartly upwards (see Fig. 26), when it will describe a semi-revolution on its longer axis, the lower face of the pack being thereby brought uppermost. If performed with the hand at rest, the movement is very perceptible; but if you at the same time make a semi-circular sweep of the hand and arm from left to right, the smaller movement of the pack in the hand is much less likely to attract notice.

      To Spring the Cards from one Hand to the Other.—This is a mere flourish, and belongs rather to the art of the juggler than to that of the magician; but it is so frequently exhibited by conjurors that a work on magic would hardly be complete without some notice of it. The cards are held in the right hand, between the tips of the second and third finger at the top, and the thumb at the bottom. If the thumb and fingers are now brought slowly nearer together, so as to bend the cards slightly, they will one by one, in quick succession (beginning with the bottom card) spring away from the pack; and if the pressure be continued, the whole of the cards will spring away one after the other in this manner. If the left hand be held at ten or twelve inches distance from the right, with the fingers slightly bent, the released cards will be shot into the left hand, which, as the last cards reach it, should be rapidly brought palm to palm with the right, and square up the pack to repeat the process. By giving the body a quick half turn to the right as the cards are sprung from one hand to the other, you may make the hands (and with them the moving cards) describe an arc of about two feet, and so deceive the eye of the spectator into the belief that the hands are that distance apart, though in reality, as they both move together in the same direction, they retain throughout their original relative distance of ten or twelve inches.

      To Throw a Card.—This sleight also belongs rather to the ornamental than to the practical part of conjuring, but it is by no means to be despised. It is a decided addition to a card trick for the performer to be able to say, “You observe, ladies and gentlemen, that the cards I use are all of a perfectly ordinary character,” and by way of offering them for examination, to send half-a-dozen in succession flying into the remotest corners of the hall or theatre.

      Fig. 27.

Скачать книгу