Endless Amusement: A Collection of Nearly 400 Entertaining Experiments in Various Branches of Science; Including Acoustics, Electricity, Magnetism, Arithmetic, Hydraulics, Mechanics, Chemistry, Hydrostatics, Optics; Wonders of the Air-Pump; All the Popular Tricks and Changes of the Cards, &c., &c. to Which is Added, a Complete System of Pyrotechny; Or, the Art of Making Fire-works.Unknown
Science
Endless Amusement: A Collection of Nearly 400 Entertaining Experiments in Various Branches of Science; Including Acoustics, Electricity, Magnetism, Arithmetic, Hydraulics, Mechanics, Chemistry, Hydrostatics, Optics; Wonders of the Air-Pump; All the Popular Tricks and Changes of the Cards, &c., &c. to Which is Added, a Complete System of Pyrotechny; Or, the Art of Making Fire-works.
A person draws four cards from the pack, and you tell him to remember
one of them. He then returns them to the pack, and you dexterously
place two under and two on the top of the pack. Under the bottom ones
you place four cards of any sort, and then, taking eight or ten from
the bottom cards, you spread them on the table, and ask the person if
the card he fixed on be among them. If he say _no_, you are sure it is
one of the two cards on the top. You then pass those two cards to the
bottom and, drawing off the lowest of them, you ask if that is not his
card. If he again say _no_, you take up that card, and bid him draw
his card from the bottom of the pack. If, on the contrary, he say his
cards _are_ among those you _first_ drew from the bottom, you must
dexterously take up the four cards you put under them, and, placing
those on the top, let the other two be the bottom cards of the pack,
which you are to draw in the manner before described.
_The Numerical Cards._
Let the long card be the sixteenth in the pack of piquet cards. Take
ten or twelve cards from the top of the pack, and, spreading them on
the table, desire a person to think on any one of them, and to observe
the number it is from the first card. Make the pass at the long card,
which will then be at the bottom. Then ask the party the number his
card was at, and, counting to yourself from that number to sixteen,
turn the cards up, one by one, from the bottom. Then stop at the
seventeenth card, and ask the person if he has seen his card, when he
will say _no_. You then ask him how many more cards you shall draw
before his card appears; and when he has named the number, you draw
the card aside with your finger, turn up the number of cards he
proposed, and throw down the card he fixed on.
_The Card found out by the Point of the Sword._
When a card has been drawn, you place it under the long card, and by
shuffling them dexterously, you bring it to the top of the pack. Then
lay or throw the pack on the ground, observing where the top card
lies. A handkerchief is then bound round your eyes, which ought to be
done by a confederate, in such a way that you can see the ground. A
sword is put into your hand, with which you touch several of the
cards, as if in doubt, but never losing sight of the top card, in
which at last you fix the point of the sword, and present it to the
party who drew it.
_The Card hit upon by the Guess._
Spread part of the pack before a person, in such way that only one
court card is visible; and so arrange it, that it shall appear the
most prominent and striking card. You desire him to think on one; and
observe if he fix his eye on the court card. When he tells you he has
determined on one, shuffle the cards, and, turning them up one by one,
when you come to the court card tell him that is the one.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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