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.
Two persons are to draw the two cards that are under the wide card,
which are the seven of diamonds and the ten of clubs. You take the
pack in your left hand, and open it at the wide end, as you open a
book, and tell the person who drew the seven of diamonds to place it
in that opening. You then blow on the cards, and, without closing
them, instantly bring the card which is at top, and on which a bird is
painted, over that seven of diamonds. To do this dexterously, you must
wet the middle finger of your left hand, with which you are to bring
the card to the middle of the pack. You then bid the person look at
his card, and when he has remarked the change, to place it where it
was before. Then blow on the cards a second time, and, bringing the
seven of diamonds, which is at the top of the pack, to the opening,
you bid him look at his card again, when he will see it is that which
he drew. You may do the same with all the other painted cards, either
with the same person, or with him who drew the ten of clubs.
The whole artifice consists in bringing the card at the top of the
pack to the opening in the middle, by the wet finger, which requires
no great practice. Observe, not to let the pack go out of your hands.
_To discover the Card which is drawn, by the Throw of a Die._
Prepare a pack of cards, in which there are only six sorts of cards.
Dispose these cards in such manner that each of the six different
cards shall follow each other, and let the last of each suite be a
long card. The cards being thus disposed, it follows, that if you
divide them into six parcels, by cutting at each of the long cards,
those parcels will all consist of similar cards.
Let a person draw a card from the pack, and let him replace it in the
parcel from whence it was drawn, by dexterously offering that part.
Cut the cards several times, so that a long card be always at bottom.
Divide the cards in this manner into six heaps, and giving a die to
the person who drew the card, tell him that the point he throws shall
indicate the parcel in which is the card he drew; then take up the
parcel and show him the card.
_To tell the Number of the Cards by their Weight._
Take a parcel of cards, suppose forty, among which insert two long
cards; let the first be, for example, the fifteenth, and the other the
twenty-sixth from the top. Seem to shuffle the cards, and then cutting
them at the first long card, poise those you have cut off in your left
hand, and say, "There should be here fifteen cards." Cut them again at
the second long card, and say, "There are here only eleven cards."
Then poising the remainder, you say, "Here are fourteen cards."
_The Four Inseparable Kings._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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