Ein Spielkarten (English)

8/11/2019 Ein Spielkarten (English)

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A

Deck of Cards.vwv

Textbook

Of

Advanced Card Magic

In Three Parts

by

R. P.

Prague.

Publisher of the Royal and Imperial Court Printing Office of Gottlieb Haases Sons

1853.


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Translators Note

Among the things that a good translation can bring out of a text are the styleand language of an author. In this case, the writers use of technical terms

in card conjuring varies greatly, reecting nineteenth-century usage as wellas his personal word choices. For example, he uses at various times Paquet,Theile and Abtheilung for what we would call a packet in English. For theverbal part of the magicians presentation, he oen uses simply Gesprch(talk, speech, conversation), and only once or twice Suada, a more technicalterm for paer used at that time.

I have tried to preserve the original word choices and style as much as possi-ble to capture the avor of the original, making use of brackets and footnoteswhere necessary for explanations. However, in the description of the pass andother sleights, for greater clarity and readability, the presentation has beenadapted slightly to the modern usage among conjurers while preserving theauthors original technique exactly.

My heartfelt thanks to Ronald Wohl and Richard Hatch for their technicalhelp with the translation.

Lori Pieper

This edition of 75 copies has been prepared for thespecial occassion of the 32nd Escorial.

2005 The Conjuring Arts Research Center11 West 30th, 5th Floor

New York, NY 10001

(212) 594-1033
http://shop.conjuringarts.org/store/pc/eBooks-by-Instant-Download-c52.htm


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Foreword

A deck of cards is a series of numbers and pictures, which are arranged in such a simple or-der that they have already had hurled at them a thousand times, just like the harmless numbers of theloery, the words: Ah, they are just silly cards! And yet they deserve this accusation much less thando the dead numbers of the loery.

These y-two cards (I am speaking of a French deck), form a closed society, which like any

other, has its own social order; there is only one thing this society can be accused of: that it follows thelaw of the jungle, that might makes right, where the weaker are always trumped by those of higherrank. But we can forgive this if we recall the period in which this society was formed.

People have wrien about most of the societies that have existed up to now, so why not therelationships of the society of a deck of cards as well? In fact, shouldnt it be illuminated in a morecharming form than has been done up to now in many more or less dry pamphlets and books ongames, that throw the already old cloak of magic and sorcery over something so simple, and containcard tricks with which you would nd it dicult to entertain a rened gathering?

More than a hundred previously completely unknown entertaining card tricks,1is howthe title announces the contents; when we read it, we nd to our galling disappointment, that theold tune, already played a thousand times is struck up again, and scarcely forty pieces, and certainlynone of them a piece of art.

These books say: perform the pass, or quickly bring the boom card to the top; but whenit comes to describing how this can be cleverly executed, they are silent.

In the following pages, I will demonstrate to the friendly reader who will make the eortto spend a few hours on them a series of card tricks, which, with a few exceptions, have never beenperformed anywhere, for they have been newly invented. Many of the eects have till now only beenseen at public performances.2

To entertain a gathering with pieces of apparatus is certainly very charming, yet they entailsignicant expense, transporting them creates many inconveniences and then nally how easily

such a machine will fail to work and leave you stranded!3

You can get a deck of cards anywhere, and anyone who makes all the sleights established inmy introduction his own cannot be embarrassed by anything, and will always perform with unself-conscious ease and elegance.

A lile patience, and a bit of manly perseverance, will easily lead, through all the diculties which at any rate only exist in appearance to an enjoyable result.

I have completely le out of my pages all the so-called puzzle tricks found in the other lileworks, and the lile jests that even at a distance betray their origin. On the subject of sympatheticinks, which such books use to deceptively inate the number of tricks as much as possible, the discus-sion here is limited to only to the most necessary things, so that my amiable reader who has made an

1 It would be interesting to know if this is the actual title or subtitle of a known publication from this period, whichmight shed some information on the identity of the author of this work. (R. Hatch).2 This comment implies that the author has given public (as opposed merely to private) performances. (R. Hatch).3 In Hofzinsers published reviews of Bosco (1846 & 1848), Herrmann (1851) and Frikell (1856), he lauds each manspossession of a wonderful machinetheir gied ten ngers. This echoes to a certain extent the sentiment expressed here. (R.Hatch).


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eort to follow my instructions will make a very welcome appearance in the select company to whichit will be my pleasure to introduce him, an appearance which will be watched with delight. That thereader bear in mind the great words: Nothing is ever perfect! is the one indulgence requested by

The Author

The beginning of January, 1853.


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Contents

Foreword 3

Introduction 8

Sec. I The Pass 8 a) Pass with both hands 8

b) Pass with one hand 9 c) Pass with three ngers 10 d) The Secret Turnover of the deck 10 e) One-card Pass with Two Hand 10 f) One-card Pass with One Hand 11 Sec. 2 The Force 11 Sec. 3 False Shues 12 Shue a 13 Shue b 13 Shue c 14 Shue d 14 Sec. 4. The Set-up Deck 14 Set-up a 15 Set-up b 17 Sec 5. On Prepared Decks and Cards 18 Practical Advice. 19

Part I

1. The Telltale Cards 21 2. The Disappearing Face Cards 22 3. A Scene from Life 23 4. The Magic Hat 25 5. Continuation of the Preceding 26 6. The Leer 27

7. The Enchanted King of Clubs 29 8. The Scales 30 9. The Card that Transforms Itself 31 10. Sympathy of the Cards and Dice 31 11. Continuation of the Preceding 32 12. The Exchange of Suits 33 13. The Prophetic Billets 34 14. As You Command 35 15. The Enchanted Candle 35 Part 1: The Quick Arithmetic 35 Part 2: The Candle 35 16. The Cadmus Cards 37 17. The Best Sleight 38

18. The Double Exchange, or the Incomprehensible Mystery 39 19. The Baby Chick in the Egg 41 20 The Bonbons 42 21 The Non Plus Ultra 43


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Part Two

1. The Friendship of the Cards 46 2. The Quick Obedience 46 3. The Magnetic Cards 47 4. The Quickly Found Cards 48 5. The Remaining Card 48 6. The Quick Transformation 49

7. The Fine Sense of Touch 50 8. The Stubborn Card 51 9. The Lile Magic Thumb 51 10. The Granted Wish 52 11. The Lucky Throw 52

12. Card Mathematics 53 13. Correct Guess 54 14. Continuation of the Preceding 54 15. The Strange Subtraction 55 16. Eective Pressure 56 17. The Obedient Packets 56 18. Touch 57 19. With the Help of a Needle 57 20. Vice Versa 58 21. True Devotion 58 22. Echapp [French=escape] 59 23. The Card Factory 59 24. In Flight 60 25. Predestination 60

Part Three

1. The Transparent Cards 62 2. A Memory Trick 62 3. The Last Card 63

4. Which Card in Sequence? 63 5. The Pre-Determined Number 64 6. Quickly Found 64 7. In Rows 64 8. Something Similar 65 9. The Granted Requests 66 10. The Remaining Card 66 11. Under the Handkerchief 67 12. The Stubborn Card 67 13. The Lile Magic Thumb 67 14. The Lucky Throw 67 15. Eective Pressure 67 16. With the Help of a Needle 67

17. In Flight 67 18. As You Command 68 19. The Best Sleight 68 20. Card Arithmetic 68 21. Puing Down Cards 68


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22. The Nameless Card 68 23. The Janus Cards 68 24. The Use of a Deck Set up According to

Section 4 for Several Simple Card Tricks 69 25.-1. The Telltale Cards 69 26.-2. The Right Cut 69 27.-3. Guessing the Card Names 69 28.-4. The Ever-Recurring Card 69

29. The Use of Prepared Decks 70 30.-1. The Reliable Cards 70 31.-2. Quick Granting of Requests 70 32.-3. Guessing the Suit 70 32. Conical Deck 71 33.-1. Some Instructions 71 34.-2. Incomprehensible Speed 72 35. You Cant Lose a Trick 72 A Few Remarks on the Use of Sympathetic Inks 74


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Introduction

All the sleights, shues and set-ups here are dealt with in paragraphs, the sub-sections aredesignated with the leers a, b, c, etc., and nally, there follow a few words on prepared decks andcards, as well as several practical pieces of advice.

Section 1. The Pass There are two ways to do the simple pass.

a) the pass with two hands b) the pass with one hand

However, insofar as the pass is called the turn or the rotation, the passes also include:

c) The pass with three ngers d) The secret turnover of the deck e) The one-card pass with two hands f) The one-card pass with one hand

The principal prerequisite for anything at all beyond the simplest card tricks is the pass.

a) The Pass with Two Hands

The deck is held face down in the le hand; the right hand cuts o a packet, and the le lilenger is placed on the remaining packet, while the other lengers are extended. Fig. I.

Place the right hand packet on the le lile nger; graspingthe upper packet with the other three le ngers and lethumb on top, while the lower packet is grasped betweenthe right middle and ring ngers at the outer end, and rightthumb at the inner end, resulting in the position of the twohands in Fig. II.

From this position, the le index,middle and ring ngers pull the top

packet just past the edge of the boom packet and then under it without ex-tending those ngers, and the deck is then held squared in the le hand; andwith this, the pass is completed.

This is the procedure for learning the pass, in which you must takespecial care that only the above-mentioned three ngers execute the movement; all the others how-ever, remain at rest. If you perform the pass several times in succession for practice, you will need to

bring the lile nger between the two packets again only while you are pulling back the top packet,and you maintain the position of the hands sketched in Fig. II. With the pass, however, as with the rest of the sleights, the beginner should not be tempted to

want to do it quickly right away; this way everything will be ruined it is beer to do it a few hun-dred times more, for it will yield a beer result.

When you use this sleight, a packet is cut with the middle and ring nger and thumb of theright hand, the card taken by the person in question is placed on top of the boom packet, and now


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the lile nger is quickly put between this card and the upper packet which goes on top of it; now thepass is executed, aer which the inserted card lies on top.

b) The Pass with One Hand.

The pass with one hand is somewhat more dicult and in and of itself is already a trick.Only a few people are familiar with this pass, and indeed, only with one kind, which I cite here as b.1. I will, however, deal with a much easier method under b. 2.

In b. 1., the deck is separated with the ring nger of the le hand, sothat it is divided into two packets, with the ring nger lying between them. Theremaining ngers of the le hand lie closed on the top packet, which we willdesignate as 1, so that the position of the ngers is that of Fig. III.

Now the thumb is pointed up, and the index, middle and lile ngers pullthe top packet sharply back to the edge of the boom packet, which is pushedsomewhat upwards with the thumb over and on top of the upper packet,which is being pushed inwards from below. Figure IV. With this, the pass has

been performed.During practical use, you have one packet of the deck in your right hand.

You have the chosen card placed on the packet located in your le hand, closethe deck and while you are closing it, put your ring nger between the two packets. Now, during asuitable speech, in which you especially make people aware that you are no longer touching the deck,you let your le hand drop to your side, and as you do so, nd an opportunity to execute the pass.

If you have to bring a card already located on top of the deck to the middle with one hand,you perform the pass according to the instructions give above and aer the pass, put your ring nger

between the two sections.

I must confess that this pass is somewhat dicult and I say to the beginner in advance that hewill let some of the cards fall to the ground a hundred times before it succeeds. But just have patience,and it will work in the end. If, however, this is not agreeable, I have here a easier method, for which,however, there is a condition.

b. 2. The deck lies as usual in the le hand. Now the thumb of thesame handis stretched over and across the deck, and raises one packet onto the rightedge high enough that the rst joint of the middle and ring ngers hasroom to bend inward over the boom packet, while the rst joints of thering and lile ngers support this packet with their knuckles. Fig. V.

Now these two knuckles press the boompacket upwards until it can be pushed across and over the top packet. Fig.VI.

At the moment depicted in this gure, the thumb lets the upper

packet fall onto the hand, while the remaining four ngers push the bot-tom packet over and are closed on it.

This method is quite imperceptible to the eye and also much easier to learn. The conditionfor it is having a wide card in the deck, and when I come to speak of this card, which belongs to thepreparation, I will deal with the execution of this pass.


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c) The Pass with Three Fingers

This is incorrectly called a pass, yet with a clever execution it is a feat of speed that is worthyof astonishment.

You turn the back card of the deck over unnoticed, so that it has the face side towards you,and while you hold the face side of the deck (not that of the turned-around card) towards the specta-tors, you take the deck on the right edge with the middle nger, on the le with the thumb, and on

top with the index nger of the right hand. Fig. VII. The ring and lile nger remain closed on themiddle nger.

Now while you make two circles in the air downwards from the right to the le andback up, and in addition, count rather slowly, one, two three, you have time to turn thedeck around between the ngers by a quick pressure, where the reversed card then ap-pears, and you have performed what appears to be one of the most dicult passes, but inreality was only a simple turning of the deck. The audience of a large city, before whichthis pass was performed by one of the most skillful conjurers, was astonished at it.

To the passes also belong:

d) The Secret Turnover of the Deck

All the books dealing with card tricks state that for this trick, aer you divide the deck in twopackets, and turn it so that the face sides are opposite each other, you put it crosswise over your n-gers, have the chosen card placed on top, close your hand, and then show the top card again, wherethe earlier card now appears to have been changed into another one.

In my opinion, with this method, it will not cost the spectators much eort to go behind thedeception; for earlier the deck was lying crosswise over the ngers, and now it is lying in the palm ofyour hand.

The following method is much more certain and with only a lile practice is imperceptibleeven to a sharply observant eye.

You take the deck face down in your le hand, thumb to the right, the remaining four ngersto the le, lying closed over [it], aer you have previously executed the half-pass imperceptibly, eitherwith both hands or with only one hand, through which the two halves face each other. Now, whileyou lower your hand very slightly to your side, and turn toward a person, you press quickly upwardswith your thumb until the ngers are against [the right side of ] the deck. The position of the decknow appears just as earlier, yet the previously looked-at top card is found on the boom, althoughthe spectator thinks he is looking at the same card.

With a lile practice, this movement can be done so quickly that you can execute it before apersons eyes, and he will only notice a slight tremor of the hand. I will speak about its use when Icome to the explanation of the corresponding trick.

Now we come to another variety of the pass, namely the one-card pass, and this includes

e) The One-card Pass with Two Hands


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This sleight is not in any of the books that have appeared up to now and are followed here,and yet it is such an essential requirement for an easy and quick execution of the card trick that itstands in the closest relationship with the pass properly speaking, and to the forcing of the cardswhich follows below the key to the most charming pieces.

The deck is held face down in the le hand as usual, the right hand, as stated in a), is curvedover it and covers it. Now during the speech, the top card will quickly be pulled back under the deckwith the closed four ngers, during which, however, you must avoid any sound.

The main use for this is that you can look at the boom card during the shue, or in anotherimperceptible way which presents itself, and while you let your hand fall, or turn to someone, youquickly pass the boom card, through which you now have the card on top, from where, in posses-sion of all the sleights oered in these pages, you can put it back anywhere in the deck and use it invarious ways.

I especially recommend learning this kind of pass. When it is practiced, each willing readerwill be convinced how benecial it is.

f) The One-card Pass with One Hand

This sleight is completely new, and since it is very easy, all the more practical, since you canexecute it completely unnoticed with one hand, while the spectators aention can be guided to some-thing else though speech and the right hand, and the le just as casually hangs at your side.

For this pass, you have the deck face down in your le hand, and the card with which youwill perform the trick is brought on top of the deck through the pass given in a) or b).

You now casually let your le hand fall slightly down to your le side, then with yourthumb, through two quick pushes, one aer another, bring the top card across to the right and indeedso far, that the rst joint of the index nger can grasp it on the back side, and with the help of themiddle nger on which the remaining ngers close, you can bring it to the boom of the deck by onequick pull down and to the right. For greater clarity, in Figure VIII below, the middle, ring and lilenger, which in the drawing are hidden by the card lying on top of them, are shown with doed

lines.

With some practice this pass can be performed very quickly and canbe used for frequent exchanges and transformations.

The use of this sleight will follow in the explanation of the tricks.

Section 2. The [Classic] Force

Forcing cards, or coercing someone to take a specic card, 4is also a prerequisite for all cardeects making a claim on the interest. Through the use of the [classic] force, in many instances, execu-tion is simplied, false shuing will be superuous, and many of the eects are truly an incompre-hensible mystery to the lay person.

Here I can only give an introduction to the appropriate procedure (for there are various

4 The author assumes that not every reader is familiar with the term Forcieren, which is derived from French, andtherefore explains the term in German: Eine Karte gezwungenerweise ziehen lassen. The classic force is the only one discussedand used in this book (Trans.).


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methods of performance), for the force is more a maer of practice than anything else. You can learnthe passes by yourself, as well as shues and set-ups; for the learning of the force, however, youmust always try it out with other people present. Hence in the beginning, you make use of friends oracquaintances, or you learn the pass so well that if the force does not succeed, you can help yourselfout with it and you will not be embarrassed.

For the [classic] force you must know any one card, which you bring to the top. The proce-dure in section 1 e is the most suitable one to use for this.

You now bring this card to the middle by means of sec. 1 a; do not remove your lile n-

ger, but let the upper packet of the deck rest on it. The next card under the lile nger is thus theone already known to you. Now you approach someone and while you invite him to take a card forhimself, you bring your right hand sideways to the right on the le hand, and with the thumb of yourle hand quickly push the individual cards of the upper packet into your right hand so far and soquickly, that at the moment when the person reaches for the card, you have already pushed out all thecards, which are lying on your lile nger, and the next one now presents itself, as if by chance andquite naturally. You must discern this moment exactly. But should there be a mishap, either becauseyou have let the proper moment go by, or the person wants to take a card from another place, youcertainly must not (as I have oen seen, even during public productions) stop at the card you wantto force and present it in an obvious way, but you should allow the person to take a card where hewishes and then either use the pass, or perform another trick.

Anyone who correctly understands all the passes and shues will absolutely not be embar-rassed by such an insignicant incident. I will endeavor to make the interested reader familiar withsuch a large number of tricks that he may always be at ease and can undertake everything with cer-tainty. During the explanation of the tricks I will very frequently make reference to these paragraphs.

You can also force several cards one aer another, only this requires somewhat more concen-tration.

Some people perform the force in this way: they have the card to be forced as the boom cardin the deck, then perform the pass, where this card then lies on the lile nger. Yet this procedureis more risky, for this card is much more easily pushed under the others, while when following the

above method, one has a beer feel for the card, because it is the rst of the boom section.

Section 3. False Shufes

We now come to this sleight, which is simple in and of itself, yet which, through the de-ception on which it rests, draws a veil over the lay persons eyes, which prevents him from seeingthrough the mystery of the trick. In most works of this kind, only two shues are given, whichmerely refer to one card, that is the boom one, and they learn to either keep it as the boom card or

bring it to the top.

However, I will acquaint the reader with shues which are much more advantageous anduseful, and through which even people who are procient in such things have been fooled.

The rst and most essential requirement for learning such shues is: to be able to shue inthe regular way skillfully, quickly and surely.

The usual methods for shuing are:


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1. While you hold the deck upright in the le hand with the face side turned to the right, withthe right cut o a packet from the deck, at the same time insert the cards that are still in your le handsomewhat loosely between those which pulled up, and repeat this procedure two or three times. Andwhile this method of shuing is very common for games, it is completely useless for accomplishingour aim.

The second, and indeed most usual way to shue is:

2. This: the deck is held upright in the le hand just as in 1., and the right hand cuts o apacket; yet the cards cut are not, as earlier, inserted between the remaining cards, but are allowed tofall one by one, or several at once over to the le of them, in which the thumb of the le hand helps,in that it quickly peels o the cards one aer another from the packet held in the right hand.

And we must use this method for a false mele [French: shue]. It allows you to shue, evenaer one or even several chosen cards have been inserted in the deck. A procedure which will fooleveryone who might be on the way to guessing the workings of the trick; for he sees that the cardshave been shued and indeed in such a usual way, such a completely simple way, that any kind ofset order of the cards must be destroyed. I will designate this shue by a.

Aer you have brought the taken cards to the top through a pass (that is, when the deck isface down in your le hand), you should then shue and yet the cards must not move out of theirposition. This takes place in the following way:

You proceed according to the instructions for shue 2; as you remove one section with yourright hand, and want to begin to let these cards fall over the remaining ones, you bring the lile ngerof your le hand somewhat in front of the section remaining in this hand, which is turned againstyour body, thus now all the cards fall not directly on this packet, but on your lile nger, which formsa division between the two packets. Now, once you have shued over all the removed cards fromyour right hand in into your le, you quickly grasp the packet that is under your lile nger, and

bring it over the previously shued down cards, where the cards placed on top earlier again lie un-changed in their place, and from there, through passes or forces, can be usedin any way you like. Fig. IX depicts the holding position of the lile nger inthe preceding shue.

Before you are able to execute this shue very quickly, you must usethese precautions: rst, do not let the lile nger protrude too far, and hold it

just on the edge of the cards; and second, always allow the cards to fall onlysomewhat more against the front edge, that is, against the index nger of yourle hand, so that no one will notice that there is a division between the re-maining packet and the newly shued packet, but will think the deck closed.

How innitely advantageous this shue is, each of my esteemed readers will be convinced,if he reads through the upcoming pieces; for a trick that is simple in and of itself can gain interestthrough this shue.

There is still one method of shuing in order to achieve the same goal, and in practice you

can rotate the preceding and following methods. This method of shuing gives you an opportunityto exhibit an impressive bit of sleight of hand.

You push all the cards in the deck, which you hold face down in your le hand, over intoyour right hand, except the boom three or four, which you hold like a fan in your le hand between


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When you perform in social gatherings, where you are exposed to the sharp observation of somany eyes on all sides, you cannot easily nd an opportunity to exchange an ordinary deck for sucha set-up one, thus prudence demands except for a few instances, where even among a large numberof people, an exchange can take place very easily and I will come to speak about these cases suchtricks are always to be chosen as an entre piece, for once the order of the cards has been disturbed, itcannot immediately be restored.

One of the principal set-ups, with which very charming and astonishing tricks can be per-

formed, and which we will designate by a, is the following, which I have composed in such a way asto make it very easy to impress on the memory; in this it is dierent from the one known up to now,which is more dicult to memorize.

a)

While the suits of the individual cards are made to follow one another in the order: hearts,spades, diamonds, clubs, you simply take a card from seven upward and then one from the acedownwards, that is: seven, ace, eight, king, nine, queen ten, jack. This sequence is as simple as pos-sible, and when the cards lie in such a way, they nevertheless appear to the eyes of the spectators tofollow each other completely at random.

Thus a deck of 32 cards set up according to this rule has the following order:

1. Seven Hearts 2. Ace Spades 3. Eight Diamonds 4. King Clubs 5. Nine Hearts 6. Queen Spades 7. Ten Diamonds 8. Jack Clubs

Now here a new rule begins, according to which, as soon as you have ordered the cards up tothe jack, the next suit is skipped, and the ordering is then continued with the following one, conse-

quently there now come:

9. Seven Spades 10 Ace Diamonds 11 Eight Clubs 12. King Hearts 13. Nine Spades 14. Queen Diamonds 15. Ten Clubs 16. Jack Hearts

According to the above rule, the next suit is skipped, as follows:

17. Seven Diamonds 18. Ace Clubs 19. Eight Hearts

20. King Spades


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21. Nine Diamonds 22. Queen Clubs 23. Ten Hearts 24. Jack Spades

Then again:

25. Seven Clubs

26. Ace Hearts 27. Eight Spades 28. King Diamonds 29. Nine Clubs 30. Queen Hearts 31 Ten Spades 32 Jack Diamonds

Now you can have the deck cut as oen as you like, but in doing so no card must be allowedto fall, or above all be brought out of its order, so you will always have the sequence, and can namethe cards from the top in order, as soon as you know only the boom card, which you very easily cannd an opportunity to glimpse as you li up the cards from the table on which they have been cut,and take them for yourself. For a beer understanding, we will go through an example.

If a packet is cut o the deck, and this is brought again under the remaining packet (and thiswhole performance together is called the cut) so that you have seen that the boom card is the eightof clubs, you immediately perform in your mind the following calculation: diamonds are followed byclubs, and the eight is followed by the king., thus the top card is the king of clubs, aer which comesthe nine of hearts, etc., etc.

With the help of the shue given in Section 3, you can use a renement, which up to now hasnot been described anywhere. That is, you shue right before the eyes of the spectators and yet youknow how to give the sequence of the cards.

The procedure detailed in Section 3 is used, thus it is always only the boom half of the

deck that is shued, and the top 10-12 cards remain undisturbed in their order and always avail-able to you as you choose. You only have to use a feint in order to obtain the knowledge of the rstcard. That is, just as you have shued through for the last time, and the cards that were on top in the

beginning are on top again, as though out of clumsiness and accidentally, you drop the top card, thisis done in order to have a chance to glimpse it when you pick it up, and in this way to already knowthe following one. If, for example, the deck has been cut several times, you now tell people that youare also going to shue again. You now shue according to section 3. a, and through the above-men-tioned feint, you nd that the top card is the jack of clubs; thus you know immediately: at the jack asuit is skipped, thus spades follow, and aer the jack comes the seven, thus the next card is the sevenof spades, followed by the ace of diamonds, etc.

There are a few other practical uses for this set-up, which in other books are counted as newtricks, uses about which I will come to speak in the explanation of the pieces.

A set-up for 52 cards is somewhat more dicult to maintain, and is also not as frequentlyused, for on account of the easier handling, people usually perform the trick with only 32 cards. Nev-ertheless, in order to meet any possible wish, I will detail the sequence here. Exactly the same rule isfollowed as for 32 cards. The suits follow the order: hearts, spades, diamonds, clubs and the 13 cards:two, ace, three, king, four queen, ve, jack, six, ten, seven, nine, eight.


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The rule, according to which aer the eight, the next suit should be skipped, is not used,rather the order of the suits continues uninterrupted through the whole deck.

1. Two Hearts 14. Two Spades 2. Ace Spades 15. Ace Diamonds 3. Three Diamonds 16. Three Clubs 4. King Clubs 17. King Hearts 5. Four Hearts 18. Four Spades

6. Queen Spades 19. Queen Diamonds 7. Five Diamonds 20. Five Clubs

8. Jack Clubs 21. Jack Hearts 9. Six Hearts 22. Six Spades 10. Ten Spades 23. Ten Diamonds 11. Seven Diamonds 24. Seven Clubs 12. Nine Clubs 25. Nine Hearts

13. Eight Hearts 26. Eight Spades

[page break]

27 Two Diamonds 40. Two Clubs28. Ace Clubs 41. Ace Hearts

29. Three Hearts 42. Three Spades 30. King Spades 43. King Diamonds 31. Four Diamonds 44. Four Clubs 32. Queen Clubs 45. Queen Hearts 33. Five Hearts 46. Five Spades 34. Jack Spades 47. Jack Diamonds 35. Six Diamonds 48. Six Clubs 36. Ten Clubs 49. Ten Hearts 37. Seven Hearts 50. Seven Spades 38. Nine Spades 51 Nine Diamonds 39. Eight Diamonds 52. Eight Clubs

Another way of seing up the cards is the following, which we will designate by

b)

The 13 cards of one suit are set up, that is, as follows:

Ace, three, king, seven, queen, four, jack, six, ten, two, nine, ve, eight.

We will come to the use of this set-up later. Actually, set-ups do not really belong in the cat-egory of performance pieces properly speaking, and can at most be performed once, for otherwise, ifthe secret is explained, they lack all interest, while other pieces have the merit of sleight of hand andquick performance in their favor. My friendly readers will perhaps accuse me of passing over in com-plete silence dozens of set-up decks that enable you to dealing winning hands,5but to that I reply that

5 Now known as cold decks. There were, even then, performers who featured a demonstration of dealing winninghands. Notable among them was the Frenchman Comus, whose blindfold piquet dealing is noted in Robert-Houdins memoirs.Hofzinser had a segment of some programs entitled Warnung vor dem Hazardspiele (A Warning Against Games of Chance),the details of which I believe are not known, but which certainly sounds like such a demonstration. So it might be reasonablefor the purchaser of such a book to hope to learn such a secret, which would explain this comment. (R. Hatch). The authordoes, however, give one demonstration of how to deal a winning hand below in Part III, num. 35-3, but using a prepared deck


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I have eliminated such set-ups here for the same reason which induced me to make no room for morefalse shues in these pages.

Now we come to:

Section 5: About Prepared Decks and Cards

One of the most useful of all prepared decks is the one with a so-called long or wide

card. By the long card I mean a card in the deck which, because of its length, can be felt among allthe other cards. The deck is trimmed, that is, on all four sides by a half line (its best to have this done

by a bookbinder), and you can even have it trimmed by a quarter line. But when the narrow side istrimmed, one card is to be le out and this is then called the long card. Such a card in the deck oersendless advantages and makes things easier, because, for example, you always have the taken cardput in the deck and you can completely close it for the purpose of the pass, without having to bringa nger between the inserted card and the remaining ones, for you have put all of these under thelong card, which, when the deck is taken up again, immediately oers itself to the touch, so that youcan execute the pass at it and thereby bring the inserted cards on top for further use. What has just

been said is valid in the same way for the wide card, a card, which has been taken out of the deckwhen the long sides are cut. It is this card also, which is necessary for the execution of the pass withone hand, as it is given in section 1. b. 2. For in this case, the thumb, which as was said there, reachesover the deck, grasps the wide card all by itself. The chosen card thus will always be inserted underthis card, and the people who think that they have inserted their cards in dierent places in the deck,have all put their cards under the wide card in the deck. You thus execute the pass at this card, andall these cards come to the top, from where they can be used as you desire. We will come to the manyuses of a long or wide card, of which the rst is preferable, in the explanation of the individual pieces.

There are still other prepared cards, in which either 1) the high cards are wider, the low oneslonger; or this distinction is employed 2) on the face card and non-face cards, or 3) on the red and

black suits. It would be superuous to deal with the use of such a deck here, for it will be more ingto say something more about this when we deal with the tricks.

You can also have a deck trimmed in such a way that, for example, face cards, or high cards,or all red cards are cut on their long edges in a convex curve, the and cards which contrast with this

in a concave curve. Yet this type is less in use.

A third way of cuing a deck is this: you have the whole deck trimmed in a conical shape,and you use this for the reverse insertion of the card, where the base of the cone of the taken card lieson the narrow side of the remaining ones, thus this card can be felt among all the rest and the trickconsists of promptly taking out this unlike card. Such a deck oers the advantage that, if, through aquick and unnoticed movement of your hand, you arrange all the cones so they lie in the same direc-tion, you can even show that the deck is not prepared, because none of the cards is longer or widerthan the others. The many uses of such a constructed deck will later be mentioned. These are methodsof preparation which are usable in many dierent cases.

The deck, as well as the individual cards, can also be prepared in many other ways, which areused in special cases, and about which my well-disposed reader will learn in more detail later on in

this book.

I now close this introduction, not without fearing that I have already made myself guilty of agreat mistake in the eyes of my esteemed readers, in that I have lingered too long here; but I console

of cone-shaped cards, not a set-up deck (Trans.).


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myself with the conviction that the fundamental elements of an object to be learned cannot be de-scribed in sucient detail.

We have now spared ourselves in the future all boring repetitions, because I will be referringlater only to the individual paragraphs and their subsections.

I believe I will be making a not unwelcome addition to this introduction for the interestedreader if I give here a few more practical pieces of advice.

1. You should try to make the following card ourish your own. As you grasp the deck inyour right hand on the narrow side and somewhat curved together, you let the cards run quickly oneaer another into your le hand, held in a diagonal direction sideways and somewhat lower. It oersa prey sight and you can oen conceal the working of a trick behind it, in that many spectators willthink this in one of the sleights. In order also to give this child a name, we will call this procedurethe spring.6Figure X will give an explanatory picture.

2. The aention of the spectators must always be deected from your hands, but especially atthe moment when you want to perform the pass or another sleight. You use feints.

3. So that you might not already betray in advancewhat you want to perform, if there should be somemishap, instead of the intended trick, be prepared toquickly perform another. In the second part, I will gothrough a few such cases by way of example.

4. If you are called upon to repeat an eect, youagree to this with the greatest readiness, but neverthe-less, quite nonchalantly do something else for the nexttrick, and only later, when no one is thinking about itany longer, you perform the repetition, and aer theperformance, you can also even call peoples aentionto the fact that you are repeating the eect, somethingwhich you do not normally do. There are a few tricks,

however, which you can repeat immediately without concern; do not engage in additional repeti-tions, however, for interest in them quickly disappears.

5. Never allow yourself to do anything with dirty, well-worn cards, because the handling ofsuch cards becomes uncommonly dicult, if not impossible, and even someone who is very skillfulcan be embarrassed; this is not counting the disgust of having to touch such sticky cards.

6. Unless expressly desired otherwise, you ordinarily use a deck with 32 cards, because of itssmaller size.

7. Make the sleight of hand your own, well and truly concealed, of hiding [i. e. palming] oneor more cards in the hollow of your right hand; that is, you curve the hand somewhat with ngersclosed, and through this, press the cards, which lie in your hand with the face side downwards, so

far together, that they do not protrude anywhere, and then maintain a casual, relaxed position of thehand.

8. If at all possible, try not to have any spectators behind you, but without leing it be obvi-ous.

6 In German, Rauschen.


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9. Always maintain a downwards inclined position of your hands, so that the [face of the]boom card can never be seen by the spectators.

10. When you have long or wide cards in the deck, if the cards are going to be cut by the spec-tators, turn to persons who you presume will not trouble themselves to feel the cards; also ask themto cut quickly and allow no time for them to think about it.

11. If you are having people think of cards, call on someone quickly and unexpectedly, and

then immediately ask another question. The reason for this feint will be illuminated in the explana-tion of the trick in question.

12. Get in the habit of a owing style of speaking, which can easily turn here and there, withwhich you will constantly capture the aention of the spectators, and can guide them according toyour will.

I have divided the tricks that follow into three parts, and indeed I have in the rst of them,where we are moving among a large company, gone through only those tricks which require prepa-ration, and have been selected for their eect. You will also nd in such a gathering a much easieropportunity for various exchanges, as the eyes of the spectators can also be readily directed to otherobjects. Very simple tricks would have lile appeal in such a large company.

And now, my good reader! I cordially invite you to visit with me today the tea party of FrauGrn (Countess) Feldberg. You will nd honest, jovial, carefree people there formality and boringetiquee are completely banished from this circle.


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cards well. Ah! Excuse me! I have dropped a card, but it doesnt maer. I now ask Frau Grn to takea card for herself, and Frau Prsidentin also, and the Frulein here also and here also, and here also,and so on, if you please. Thats enough now! I ask you to put the cards all together here on the tablein front of me, I will put the rest on top of them, and now I ask you to shue them well. Every timeanyone takes a card from the deck, it will tell me which card he had earlier. Will the Grn now tryit! Ah you chose the eight of diamonds, so you had the nine of hearts before; Frau Prsidentin takesthe ace of hearts! Earlier you had the queen of spades and you, Frulein, had the ten of diamondsfor you have taken the seven of hearts (and so forth for everyone).

vwv

Before you go into the company, you set up the deck in accordance with Section 4. a. and cutit yourself so that the ace of hearts is on the boom; it is on this card that the stamp is placed, and thisdeck is oered for sale in shops with this card on the boom. Now you carefully place the deck inthe wrapper again, wrap a white thread around it, just as it was before, knot this, and put the drop ofsealing-wax where it was before, restored again.

Now you shue according to Section 3 a. and with the precautions in Section 4 a. for thiscase. Aer this is done, drop the top card as though by accident and you have seen that it is, in thiscase, the king of clubs. You thus already know that the card now on top is the nine of hearts. Nowyou have the cards removed from the top one aer another in sequence, but the sequences of the per-sons as well as that of the cards must be noted. This is easy, moreover, as long as you have noted therst one.

The choosing and guessing of the cards is a feint, adopted in order to rst, throw a cloak overthe maer, which is simple in itself, and second, gain time for thinking [about the order of the cards].If you still are not practiced enough, you can help yourself out by dealing with the persons again inthe same order as they earlier removed the cards one aer another in sequence.

2. The Disappearing Face Cards

Frulein, will you be so kind as to shue the deck? I will take the 12 face cards out of it andnow ask you, Frulein, if you will look at the boom one of them. Please memorize it well, and now

very kindly tell me whether you want to pull out this card by the front or the back edge; I also askyou not to look again at the chosen card, which, Frulein, you already know anyway, but keep it facedown in your hand.

(Repeat this until every face card has been taken) when you have the last one taken, youmust take care to position yourself so that no one can see into your hollow right hand. The reason forthis follows below).

I now ask you to see for yourselves that the top card of those that have been lying up tonow untouched upon the table is a non-face card. I will put this deck again here and cover it with ahandkerchief. Now I ask all the ladies and gentlemen who have endeavored to take a card to namethese cards for me at the same time. There will very probably be a great babble of exclamations, butdont be afraid, I will nevertheless be able to distinguish each card. Now! What? You have all chosen

the queen of hearts? Thats not possible! For the queen of hearts lies there under the handkerchief asthe top card in the deck. Ah! You may well wonder, and perhaps think that I have had you choose awhole packet of queens of hearts, and then specially transformed one on top of the deck. That shouldhave indeed been very simple. But I ask you, ladies and gentlemen, to look at the cards which youhave in your hands, and you will be assured that you actually have chosen the face cards from thedeck and that all the queens of hearts have disappeared.


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In the preceding piece, you intend to perform it with the queen of hearts; you could just aswell choose another face card. You take the queen of hearts from another deck, identical to the onewe use, cut it widthwise in the middle, and keep this half on you. While the cards are shued, yound time to take out this half and conceal it in your right hand. You now nd all the face cards exceptfor the queen of hearts in the deck and put this on top of the deck, which you put down on the table.Arrange the withdrawn face cards in your hand into a packet and put the half card as the boom one.

Now take this packet in your right hand, in such a way that the face side is turned toward the specta-tors, place your thumb behind on the back side, and the remaining 4 ngersclosed over the face side, so that the index nger covers the cut edge of the halfcard, and thus it seems as if a queen of hearts is the boom card. Fig. XI.

Thus you approach the people, hold the packet right before their eyes, askthem to look at the card and while you ask where they wish to take out thecard, lower your hand, so that the front side edge is turned toward the person,

and at the same time make use for a moment of your le hand in order to bring your right somewhatfurther forward on the edge. Now if anyone wants to take out the card by the front, you most willing-ly agree to this in words, while you move back with your right hand, that is, sliding back on the sidewalls of the packet. The le hand, which is curved lightly over the right, can serve for the more rapidexecution of this movement, in that the thumb of the same hand pushes the packet forward. Through

this backwards sliding movement of the hand, the half queen of hearts has also been pushed back, sothat the person now takes another card, which, however, as oen mentioned, he must not see.

If anyone should express a wish to take out the card backwards, it is all the easier, for thenyou only need to present your hand turned across to the right and present the back edge to theperson, where he has to take the boom card, thus he will just as lile take the queen of hearts, for itextends only from the top down to half the length.

So you continue this until all the face cards have been taken, and with the last one youobserve the remark made above, where you then must try to bring the half card unnoticed to yourside. Yet caution must be used, by having people who sit quite far apart from one another take cards,in order to prevent the communication of the names of the face cards, for this reason also you holdit right in front of their eyes, so that another person does not see them. The real queen of hearts you

have, as already said, put on top of the deck. While you now grasp the deck, you perform the pass asin Section 1. a., through which, naturally, another card lies on top. You allow, however, the lile ngerto lie between, and as you turn again to the table, you perform the same pass again, through whichthe queen of hearts again lies on top. You could also use the procedure from section 1 e or f.

3. A Scene from Life

I now turn to you, Herr Major, with the request to shue the deck, then to pick out the fourkings from it and to put them in front of you on the table. Meanwhile I have the honor of presenting asimple hat, which, as you see, is completely empty and in which you cannot nd the slightest prepa-ration. I will place it here on this table. Comtessa, allow me, for a few moments, to ask for this lovelyhandkerchief.

Now! Herr Major is already ready! Ladies and gentlemen, you can see for yourselves thatthese are the 4 kings. Herr Major, if you will gather these 4 cards together into a packet, and give itto me. Now I will wrap these 4 kings here in this handkerchief and put everything together in the


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4. The Magic Hat

As you have seen for yourselves, ladies and gentlemen, the hat is empty, without prepara-tion, a quite ordinary felt hat; since we already have it here, it shall serve us again. Herr von R . . .will you be so kind as to shue the deck. I will place the deck here spread out on the table and nowI ask you all, as you please, to take out cards for yourself, wherever you like, look at them, and putthem back again, anywhere in the deck. Please, Herr R . . ., shue once more, then throw the wholedeck into the hat. Now I will shake the cards to mix them even more and cover the hat with a hand-

kerchief. And now, ladies and gentlemen, if you please, always name for me the card you have takenand I will immediately pull it out of the hat and show it to you.

Seven of clubs! Seven of clubs! Aha! I believe I have it already here is the seven of clubs, andHerr Major ! The ace of hearts. As soon as I look! Now! Now! Ah! You have put it here under the

jack of clubs, it hid itself but it availed it nothing! Here is the ace of hearts (while continuing to speakthis way, you give out all the wished-for cards).

vwv

As dicult as this trick appears, a trick which always produces astonishment, it is neverthe-less very simple and requires only a lile memory and concentration.

Although you show the hat to be empty, even let people reach inside it, it is nevertheless verywell prepared. You cut strips of paper (supple paper, the best is leaves from a book) approximately5 inches long and 2 inches wide These you fold lengthwise. Now you take the hat and raise thesweatband completely up. There thus still remains in the hat the lining, which nevertheless is no-where fastened down. You set the hat in front of you, in such a way that the fastening of the hatbandis to the right and now in the same direction as this, glue one of the strips of paper to the hat and thelining, so that the closed end is below and you can put cards in the pocket formed in this way, so thatthey stick out approximately a half inch above the edge of the lining, which will certainly be the case,if the strip is cut 5 inches long, and its edge of is glued on the edge of the lining. Then you do thesame on the directly opposite side and then on top and on the boom in the middle between these

two pockets. Fig. XII.

Now sort the cards (from one of your identical decks) by suitand put them in the usual order: 7, 9, 9, 10, jack, queen, king,ace, and thus ordered, always put one suit in one pocket, so thatwhen you turn the hat with the fastening to the right and withthe opening towards your chest, and pressing your le armagainst yourself, while reaching inside it with your right hand,to the right you nd the hearts, to the le diamonds, on the top,spades, and on the boom clubs, and in fact, the face sides in allfour pockets face the inside of the hat, thus the rst card in eachpocket is the seven, the eighth one the ace.

When the hat has been prepared this far, turn the sweatbanddown again over the lining, and should it extend more than a

half-inch beyond its edge, cut it o at this length.

If you have made the strips narrow and glued them on well and cut o the sweatband at thislength, you can quite tranquilly show the hat to anyone and no one will notice anything. Aerwards,when in order to perform the trick, the hat is covered with the handkerchief, you surround it with


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your le arm, without leing it be noticed, and turn it so that you feel the buckle at the right. Nowwhen anyone requests a card, put your right hand under the handkerchief, and while you agitatethe cards with your le hand and speak the corresponding words, search with your right hand forthe desired card, while you right in the beginning li up the sweatband and count o the sought-forcard in the pocket. For greater intelligibility, here is an example. The nine of diamonds is desired. Youknow that diamonds is opposite hearts, thus to the le, and nine is the third card from the top, and soyou can, to the general astonishment, quickly show any desired card.

A casual manner, along with a constant lively paer and a absolutely precise concentrationare the main requirements for this eect. Yet you must pay aention to which cards from each suit arealready missing, in order not to make any mistakes in the counting; hence it is good to put the cardsthat have been taken out on the table, in order to keep them in view. In the beginning, if you are notyet quite uent in this sleight, you can also have only a few cards chosen and, to this end, oer thedeck to people with your own hand.

5. Continuation of the Preceding

Ah! Ladies and gentlemen! You really will not believe that the hat is a help to me in ndingthe cards. I will confess to you where the art lies; that is, I have marked all my cards, and the wholediculty rests only on the very ne and accurate sensitivity of my ngers this is common practice.But now I have come to speak about the magical power of my hat. I turn to the Frau Grn. Whichcard did Frau Grn choose? The ten of hearts. Will you now command in which size this ten ofhearts shall appear? The larger one or the smaller one? The larger one. You want the larger one!Very well! Please give me your ten of hearts, I will put here in the hat and now

Through unseen Spirit powers It shall transform itself into a giant monster!

Allons! and here a giant monster ten emerges oh! This is not enough! How oen do youcommand that he shall appear in this form? Three times? Right, then! Esteemed Frau Grn, myspirits are obedient servants. Here is the rst here the second and here the third giant, but theirpowers are far from exhausted. If Frau Grn should order these giants to shrink again, I only needto throw one of the horrible apparitions back into my magic hat and order:

That the Titans instantly Arrive in the kingdom of the pygmies

Now a ten of diamonds appears here quite in miniature. And if Frau Grn should perhapsexpress the wish to see more such prey lile dwarfs appear, I have here the honor, one two ve,of conjuring up a whole handful out of thin air.

I will turn the hat over, I have nothing but ordinary cards here.

vwv

This amusing continuation of the preceding can be very easily accomplished if you have a

few cards made (the most suitable are cards with pips) in a format as large as the entire height ofthe hat and as wide as the space between two glued-in paper strips, and have the same cards madeup in miniscule format. You acquire a fairly large number of identical cards of both kinds, especiallythe small ones, and stick the large ones in the space to the right, and the small ones to the le. Thusyou can perform this piece with two dierent cards. Nevertheless it is not very advisable to engage


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in repetitions. Also you must pay close aention to the person who drew that card of which we stillhave the abnormal-sized copies in the hat, and then quite by accident address your question directlyto this person. Should he desire a larger number than you possess, you can easily help yourself out bypretending that this would take too long, because the large cards cannot grow as quickly. When thelarge card is thrown in again, you put it immediately in its earlier place. When you want to end thetrick, you press the sweatband down again completely over the lining, put everything inside in order,remove the handkerchief, and tip the hat, emptying the deck you put into it in the beginning out ontothe table.

6. The Leer

Since we have here a whole generation of cards, large and small, together, and it wouldtake too long to sort them, I would rather use a new deck, which just like the rst is still to be foundin its wrapper, and is completely untouched. I will put the lower-numbered cards away again andkeep only the 32 piquet cards; Herr Baron, will you be so good as to shue the cards. Thank you, andplease give them back to me, and the Comtessa will perhaps be so good as to take a card. Please tellme, which card is it? The jack of spades. Will the Comtessa tear this jack of spades into lile pieces. Yes! Yes! Without hesitation, and now please give the pieces to me. I will spread them out here onthe table, and order them a lile in rows, and now decide, Comtessa, which of the two rows I shalltake, the top or the boom. The boom one, then? Very good! Away with it! In this top row there areonly ve pieces le, these I will put down again in two rows, and now I ask you to command whichrow belongs to me! The top one. As you command! The boom one thus belongs to the Comtessa,and I ask you to please take it away. Now there are only three pieces here, will you very kindly selectone of them! This one? Please remove it now and keep it on you. The remaining cards, which are nolonger necessary, I will place here in this box, which is very simple; for as you see, the box and lid areof the same depth. But now I have almost forgoen that I have the responsibility of puing the jackof spades back together. I must ask you to be patient for a while. But in order not to let the time go byunused, will the Herr Professor be so good as to read out loud to us this leer, which I received thismorning with his address. Please open it! What, another address? To the Herr Major! What? It doesnot belong here either; it is addressed to the Fraulein. Ah! Now that is really too much! Now! Finallywe come to the Comtessas address. Now please open this leer, for the torn-up jack will be foundwhole again inside it But there is a piece missing here! What! Is something missing? Ah! Now I re-member, Comtessa, you kept back a piece; please align this, thus showing that it ts the card exactly. I

open the box, it is empty; for in a miraculous way the lile pieces have been joined together again.

vwv

From another deck identical to yours, take a card, in this case the jack of spades, and tear alile piece from the corner about the size of your thumbnail, so that a corner pip and a few lines ofthe picture are still on it. You keep this lile piece, but you put the card in an envelope, seal it, and ad-dress it to one of the people with whom you are thinking of performing the trick, place this envelopein a second one, then this one again in a third and so on, and address each one to one of the otherpersons, but only to those who you are certain you will meet in the company. This leer, as well as thetorn-o piece you stick in a place where you can easily take them out unnoticed. Aer the deck has

been shued, and you have goen it back, you quickly look through it and nd the same card as theone in the envelope, and quickly bring it to the top, so that from here it can be forced, according to

the instructions in Section 2; here, however, you must act with certainty, for, as you can easily see, itis an indispensable condition for this trick that the card be taken that you want to be taken. However,should you have a mishap and another card is taken, you can easily help yourself by performing withthis one of the tricks from the second part and then quickly force the jack of spades again a secondtime. If it still doesnt work, you postpone this trick until a more favorable moment.


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there? If he says the one on the right, then you take the other away, and give him the rst one tohold, if he says the one on the le, you ask him to take away the one on the right.

The questions must be asked quickly, the answers implemented instantaneously and withouthesitation. With some practice, this is very easy to do and in addition to this you take the precaution,when you ask the questions, of turning to the dierent persons, thus it is scarcely to be supposed thatanyone will be able to guess the connection.

The box used here is made of sheet brass, round, in diameter the length of a card, and ofan inch high. Box and lid are of equal height, and the laer ts completely over the box. Also made ofthe same material is a round sheet which ts exactly in the lid; it is held in the lid through the press-ing together of the side walls, so it is completely unnoticeable; when the box is shut, it falls on thepieces of the card put in the box; then, when it is opened again, the sheet of brass forms the empty

boom of the box.

7. The Enchanted King of Clubs.

I will now take the deck in my hands again, and shue it well a few times. Now please lookat the top cards and also here at the boom ones. Perhaps now Frau Grn will endeavor to look atthis top card, and put it back in its place and I ask for the name of this card. The king of clubs. Ikiss your hand. Now I turn to you, Herr Major, and ask you to again take the same king of clubs, andwithout looking at it, hold it in your hand. And now, Herr Major, when I command my magic spirits,which I certainly do not have any pleasure in knowing, that this gloomy card should change into amore jovial, friendly Fortuna,9that is certainly everything that Frau Grn wishes in her heart, isnt ittrue? Then you share my wish. Oh, please hold on tightly to the king of clubs. So Allons! One, two,three! Please look at the king of clubs and our wishes are granted.

Unfortunately, it is not in my power to enchant this Fortuna forever, for when Herr Majorgives this card back to me and Frau Grn perhaps will look at it again, thus the black king hasalready suppressed this beautiful Fortuna again and taken her place. I now turn to you, Herr G. . .in order at the same time to make a lile test of my art of prophecy. Will you, in the same way as theHerr Major, take the king of clubs again, and hold it concealed in your hand, put your hand on your

heart, and so I say, animated with the prophetical spirit, that what you press to your heart is what youardently love. One! Two! Three! Now we will learn the identity of Herr G . . .s lady love! Ah! What isthis? A cigar! Oh, please, a thousand times pardon! For my art of magic has most horribly forsakenme! I intended to produce something quite dierent, for evidently my magical formula must havelacked something. Ah! Dont laugh, if we learn that Herr G . . .only loves cigars fervently! Ha! Ha!Ha! But I will hasten to make good my mistake. Please put this cigar here in front of me again, andit should quickly change back into its original form. Which Frau Prsidentin, when she pleases, cansee for herself. You see, it is once again my old king of clubs. Now however, please, Fraulein R, takethis Proteus10of a king, and without looking at it, hold it concealed in your hand, for precisely onaccount of its ability to change its form, it oen avoids a strangers glance. Now, however, I hope thatmy spirits will not embarrass me like that again if I order them to have this king of clubs give up tous your secret thoughts, Fraulein. Yes! Yes! Go ahead and laugh! We will immediately learn what theFraulein loves most in her most secret thoughts.Allons!Your invisible thoughts! We want to know!

Please now Frulein, turn over the card! You see there now laughs at us the mischievous God of love(Cupid)! Dont be angry that this king of clubs is such a taletale. Give me the Cupid back, and you

9 Fortuna was the name of the Roman goddess of fortune, or good and bad luck. She is also the origin of the expres-sion Lady Luck (Trans.).10 In Greek mythology, the sea-god Proteus was known for being able to change his form at will (Trans.).


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shall in a moment behold again the gloomy face of the king of clubs. Herr Professor, please look andsee whether this is correct. Voila! Here is the old king of clubs.

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You split three cards from a deck with identical backs, which is what we will use, peel o theface side, and glue some ne drawing paper to the other. On these 3 cards (we could still call themthat) you have a clever draughtsman paint 3 dierent objects. I have chosen, for example, a winged

Fortuna with a horn of plenty, a lighted cigar and a laughing Cupid. But you must take care that thelile pictures are executed with great delicacy and charm. Then take from 3 decks, likewise with thesame back side, the King of Clubs, and now you put these 6 cards in the following order face down:

The King of Clubs Fortuna The King of Clubs Cigar The King of Clubs Cupid

Thus refurbished, you have these six cards on you.

Now while during the preceding trick the spectators are occupied with looking to see wheth-er the lile piece chosen beforehand really does t the jack of clubs found in the leer, you can veryeasily nd an opportunity to take the deck in your hand again, put the king of clubs from it on topand on this the six custom-made cards, so that the picture always lies between two kings.

Now you begin the trick; shue according to Sec. 3 a, perform the pass in Section 1 a. inorder to bring the arranged cards to the middle, show the cards now lying on top, as well as a fewfrom the boom, and as you continue to talk and approach a person, you execute a half pass fromSection 1 a, through which the half of the deck that is on top at that moment goes under the boompacket in such a way the face sides are turned towards one another, and the back is showing on boththe top and the boom of the deck, so they look exactly the same. On top you put the prepared cardsand now you use the procedure given in sec. 1 d. That is, you have people look at the rst king of

clubs, and while it is being looked at, you turn the deck over, so that the person who thinks that he ispuing the king again in its earlier place, is actually puing it on the boom packet of the deck. Nowyou turn to another person, and at the same moment you turn the deck over, so that now Fortuna ischosen, which you then again have put on the boom, then the deck is turned over again, so that thesecond king is visible, you now go to the king belonging to your deck, which is the last one.

8. The Scales

It very frequently happens in everyday life that the weight of small objects is estimatedinformally in the hand. I will now also use this method on the cards here, only with the aggravatingcircumstance that I will give not the weight, but the number of the cards, always with certainty. Inorder to demonstrate this on the spot, I will put the deck here on the table, cut it in half and I now askyou to decide which packet to choose. This one? So the one to the right; I will place it here on top of

the ngers of my right hand and you will permit me to weigh it. I declare that in this packet there are12 cards. Please count them. Is that right? Is my statement correct? I will now collect the cards, andturn here to Herr von M . . . I will cut the deck again please choose a packet! I will weigh this in myhand, and can immediately detect that it contains 17 cards (And you can repeat this as much as youlike).


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The new deck brought out in Nr. 6 is provided with a long card (or even with a wide one).

Before performing this eect, you put this as the boom card and bring a number of cards unnoticedfrom the top below this card, but you must know the number. In our case it is 12. You now cut at thelong card, and when you have people decide which packet is to be weighed, arrange it in such a waythat the answer must always be that the packet which remains for weighing is the one which wasunder the long card. For this you proceed n the same way you did in Nr. 6 with the choosing of the

lile piece. You now act as if you are assessing the weight, and can now easily give the number youalready know. While these cards are being counted by the spectators, you have an opportunity toagain bring a few cards down from the still remaining packet, which again has the long card as the

boom card. You now also place the already counted cards on it, and in this way you can repeat thetrick several times. If you want to have fewer cards, you only need to take away 3-4 unnoticed duringthe collecting of the cards from the already counted ones, and put them on top of the deck.

9. The Card that Transforms Itself

Herr Major, please shue the deck thoroughly. Thank you kindly. Will Frau Grn now dome the favor of taking a card, looking at it and shuing it back in the deck. Frau Prsidentin, pleasedo the same as well, and Herr von G . . . will perhaps also be so kind ah! Herr Oberlieutenant, youhave not yet honored me, you must also quickly take a card, and Frulein, may I ask you. But I will

not trouble you too much. Now please note the cards well, but tell no one what they are.

I have just one more thing to ask: that is, that Herr Major will shue the pack once more,and then put it in his breast pocket. I will not touch the deck again. Herr Major, have you done thatnow? Yes! Now I will reach into the pocket and take out the rst card which comes to my hand. Ah!Here I already have one! During this, however, I take the deck from Herr Major s pocket into mine,in order not to trouble him any longer. This card snatched at random I will now wrap here in thishandkerchief my hands are empty please see for yourselves that only one card can be felt in thehandkerchief. Please now Frau Grn, is that your card? Yes it is! I will wrap the card up again, rubit a lile and here, Herr Oberlieutenant, it has now turned into your card. Am I correct? Quite right!But now quickly for Frau Prsidentin. I rub this a lile. One! Two! Three! Here is Frau Prsidentinscard and in an instant through the same technique Herr von G . . . his and now once more Alllons!Fraulein! Here I have the honor of showing you your card. Is that right? Yes!

But ladies and gentlemen! You are too indulgent with me, and expect too much from me. Thistrick was very easy to perform, for you have indeed all taken one and the same card. Here it is.

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For this eect you likewise need a long card, which you continually force, according to Sec-tion 2. Each time aer it is shued in, you feel it right away again, perform the pass on it according toSec. 1 a. and force it again. Why you take the deck and put it in your own pocket will be explained inthe following trick. This piece is really astonishing. You have to take the precaution of having personsfar apart from one another take cards in order to prevent communication between them.

10. Sympathy of the Cards and Dice

I will now take my deck again in my hand, and ask Herr Doctor to very kindly take a cardand to look at it. I will now shue this card back in, and divide the whole deck into 4 packets here onthe table. Now I ask you to look at these two dice and inspect them closely in regard to their genuine-


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ness. On one you will nd that only 4 sides are marked, and its purpose is to show us in which packetthe card taken by the Herr Doctor lies. I will now put it here in this cup, and ask you to throw it. Itsa three thus the card must be in the third packet. I will quickly take it out, and push the remain-ing cards together. Now there is yet a second die. On this one, however all six sides have spots. Thisone shall decide for us, which card in sequence in the earlier designated packet the Professor s [i.e.Doctors] card shall be.

The die indicates 5. So we count! One, two, three four ve. Herr Doctor! Here is your card.

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The performance of this piece depends simply on a deception, and if you should be called onfor a repetition, in addition to the way given here, where the cards are false and the dice are genuine,it can also be performed in another way, where the opposite is the case. We will go through the orderaccording to the rst case performed earlier in our number.

You provide yourself with a deck of identical cards, for example, all aces of spades, yet withthe same backs as the one used by us. This you have earlier already stuck in your pocket, and sincein the preceding trick you have kept the cards in your pocket, the exchange can be made all the moreeasily. The remainder of the performance can be inferred from the speech, only it is to be noted herethat during the whole you have to carefully avoid all turning over of individual cards. The dice aremade of wood, and are a half-inch square. One is marked only on 4 sides with the consecutive num-

bers 1, 2, 3, 4. If by chance a throw should be result in one of the blank sides coming up, have the diethrown again. For a cup you must wherever possible choose a thick dark glass and have the throwdone on a table covered with a heavy cloth. The reason for will be very easily apparent from thefollowing number. If you are not called on to repeat this trick, then leave it at that, but immediatelypocket the dice and false cards again as usual. But should a repetition be desired, pretend that youare somewhat embarrassed by it, but nally proceed in the following way.

11. Continuation of the Preceding.

I see already, ladies and gentlemen, that you have no mercy with me and will lead me ontothe precipice of embarrassment. I abandon myself to my fate and am prepared to repeat this piece.

But I have in haste already put the cards in my pocket again. Yes! My dear ones! You still get nopeace, now come out again. Perhaps the Comtessa will take a card! Please, put it for me here in thedeck. I will now shue the cards and convince myself that the deck really is mixed together. Or no,I will not touch it again, but will put it on the table. But then where are the dice? Ah! I believe I haveput them in my pocket too! Right, there they are. I will put the one, where only 4 sides are providedwith spots, here in the cup again, and please Comtessa, quietly hold on to it. Now I will divide thedeck as before into 4 packets and now ask you to throw a die. The die shows 1. So the card must be inthe rst packet. Now the second die also goes in the cup! This one shows us three. So the 3rd card inthis packet must be the one taken earlier. I will no longer touch it, but please, see for yourselves.

But since someone from the company may perhaps doubt the genuineness of the cards, justas the dice, as you see, are the same, the cards have also remained the same, for you can see for your-selves that they are our usual cards.

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Since you have previously pocketed the cards and the dice as though in haste, the repeatedexchange can be made all the more easily without being obvious. For you now bring out the genuinecards.


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You have someone take a card and put it back into the deck, and you immediately performthe pass as in Section 1. a., through which it becomes the top card. Now during your speech, aer theshue, you pass two cards from the boom to the top according to section 1. e., and in doing so, therst card now becomes the third. You could also force a card, but here you have the awkward situ-ation that aer you have had the person shue the card back into the deck, you must nd it againand make it the third from top; while this is eected quite simply through the pass and the one-cardpass. The division into 4 packets must be quick and be so arranged that the top cards lie in the rstpile, which you can place, as you desire, to the right or to the le And now to the dice. These are false.

You go to a wood turner and have 4 dice made, two of which are genuine and are the ones used inNr. 10 In two, however, an indentation is made, approximately one line deep, in which a lead plateis inserted. The dice are then painted exactly alike. On one dice, opposite the lead plate, a spot isnow painted, and this die is suited for the choosing of the packets On the second die three spots arepainted in the same way, opposite the lead plate, and since this one has spots on all six sides, theymust be painted opposite the four. These dice can now be thrown as always; one will always showone, and the other three. In order to conceal the heavy thud of these false dice, you have them thrownon a heavy cloth. For in everything else they look exactly the same as the others, so people can indeedlook at them, but not take them in their hands.

12. The Exchange of Suits

I now ask that the deck be well shued, and give the ace of diamonds out of it to me thank you very much and now please the ace of spades too.

I will make use of those two lile tables; but in order to avoid all suspicion, please li upthe cloth and look to see whether a card may perhaps be hidden somewhere on the lile table or thecloth. My hand is empty, the cloth lies again on the table. I will now take this ace of diamonds andput it here under the cloth and then in the same way the ace of spades under this one. And with-out my approaching the table again, I order that the two representatives of the suits should changeplaces. Allons! One! Two! Three! And you see here, where the diamond lay earlier, the spade now lies,and here instead of the spade, the diamond Oh! If you are quick, anything is possible!

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You have cut the pips out of a diamond and a spade from another deck, but if these are toosmall to cover another pip, you can, instead of the too small one, cut one out of ordinary paper in thesame way and paint it. On the back of each one of these pips you have stuck a lile piece of so whitewax [or magicians wax] and thus prepared, have stuck them together. Now while the tablecloth is

being examined, you walk around a lile and thus have an opportunity to break the pips opposite thetwo aces, so that when they are shown, the diamond now appears as an spade and vice versa. Thatyou will hold these cards up to no ones eyes goes without saying. The whole trick must be performedquickly. You take the supposed ace of diamonds, bring it close it to the table, and while you li thehanging part of the cloth with your le hand, you reach under it with your right hand, in which youhold the card, whisk away the glued-on diamond pip with your ngers, and place the card under thecloth face down on the table. Since your hand was covered by the cloth, you could do this very easily.The same thing is done with the alleged ace of spades. If then the cloth is raised, you must not letanyone take hold of the card, but show it yourself, in order, if need be, to be able to remove any traces

of the wax found on it. If there is no opportunity to use the tablecloth, you put the cards (each oneseparately) under the foot of one of the gentlemen present, while you, as you bend down and pretendto put the foot right on it, have time to remove the stuck-on pips.


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13. The Prophetic Billets

I have here a whole special deck, one that is wrien on. That is, on the same number of bil-lets, which incidentally are just as large as the usual cards, are wrien the names of the 32 cards ofa piquet deck. In order to assure yourselves of the truth of my statement, please look at a few cards.Thus the 32 cards lie together here completely without any order. To top it o, I will also shuethem. Since, however, only 18 cards are needed for our purpose, I will put 14 of them aside and theremaining ones I will divide here by sixes into three packets. I now ask for the deck of cards used ear-

lier. I will now depart and in my absence please remove a billet from one of the packets and keep iton you and then when I re-ente, give me whats wrien on it. (You now go out and when you comein you continue the speech ). Herr Professor, please be so kind as to take a card from my deck, butnot to look at it yet. I now ask that the name of that card which has been wrien on the billet be saidout loud! The queen of hearts! I now ask you, Herr Professor, to turn over the card you took, andyou will nd that the card you have taken has been named in advance by the billet, for Herr Profes-sor, you also have here the queen of hearts!

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You cut out of a sheet of card paper 32 billets, approximately the same size as an ordinaryplaying card. On 14 of these sheets, you now write the names of dierent cards, for example, theseven of hearts, the jack of clubs, etc. etc., but on each one a dierent name. There still remain 18cards; on each group of six of these you write the same name, for example, on the rst group of six,the queen of hearts, on the second six, the ten of clubs, and on the third the king of diamonds. Theseyou now place face down on top of one another, so that on the boom lies the queen of hearts, ontop of this, the ten of clubs, and on top the king of diamonds. On this now go seven of the dierentwrien-on cards, and the other seven go under the queen of hearts. Thus prepared, you put the deckin your pocket. Then you bring it out, and give out for examination the seven from the top, and thenthe other seven. You collect them again, thus you put all 14 under the queen of hearts. You have madeone of the 14 dierent wrien-on cards wider, that is, all the remaining 31 are cut somewhat narrow-er. This you now put as the rst card under the queen of hearts, and the other 13 under that. This isonly necessary, however, if you want to make the thing still more inexplicable, and want to shue thecards. Then when you take the deck for shuing, you grasp it at the third card, and thus cut o onlythe 14 dierent wrien-on cards, and now shue this up to the king of diamonds. Since nevertheless,

as is mentioned in the speech, only 18 cards are necessary, you can count o 14 and now have theking of diamonds as the top card in your hand. Divide these 18 cards into 3 packets of six each; in therst packet there are only kings of diamonds, in the second only tens of clubs and in the third onlyqueens of hearts.

Now you have already arranged earlier with that person from the company (I for examplewith you, kind reader!) as follows. When a billet has been taken from the packet which I put downrst, that is a king of clubs, then as I re-enter, you speak with your neighbor to the le, and if it istaken from the middle, that is, a ten of clubs, you say nothing, but look directly in front of you. Nowwhile you are out of the room, you quickly nd in the deck the three wrien-on cards and put themon top of it, in our case rst the queen of hearts, on that the ten of clubs and, as the top card, the kingof diamonds. You now force the card corresponding to the marks on the billet. In your case, yourconfederate has spoken to his neighbor on the le we thus now know that the queen of hearts has

been taken. Since, however, this card now lies in the deck as the third from the top, you must passtwo cards according to Section 1 e. in order to gain them as the two top cards and to be able to forceaccording to Section 2. You must also arrange with the person with whom you have the agreement,that he should take care that no other billets but the one taken be looked at, and further, that whenthe trick is repeated, a card will be taken from another packet. The card taken out of the real deck is


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given back and during the time you are out of the room, you place the 3 cards again in their earlierorder. Immediately aer the end of the trick you must remove the billets.

14. As You Command

Indeed, ladies and gentlemen, it is scarcely to be believed, what kind of mastery you can ac-quire over the cards. As a demonstration, I will give here a very small example en passant. Will FrauGrn very kindly take a card, look at it, shue it in again and put the deck on the table. What does

Frau Grn now command? Shall I name the card, shall I have it taken again or perhaps in an instantcut at it?

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You now force the taking of the long or wide card what you have to do, when you want tohave it taken again, is already known you force it again. Should you cut at it, that is still easier, foryou feel it in an instant, and cut at it, where it thus becomes the boom of the cut packet.

15. The Enchanted Candle

Part 1. The Quick Arithmetic

Comtessa! I ask you to shue and now to take a card for yourself from the deck and FrauPrsidentin, will you perhaps also endeavor to take a card; Herr Professor would you be so kind? Herr Baron, may I also ask you to take a card, and Herr Major will perhaps also take part, and I willalso ask the Frau Grn to be so kind. I will now shue the remaining cards and ask you, Comtessa,if you will put your card in here and Herr Major here Herr Professor in this place now I will shuf-e the cards a lile, so that they cannot be in any particular order, and now, Frau Praesidentin, I askfor your card, and Herr Baron will perhaps put it o

Ein Spielkarten (English)

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