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.
Take a card, the same as your long card, and, rolling it up very
close, put it in an egg, by making a hole as small as possible, and
which you are to fill up carefully with white wax. You then offer the
long card to be drawn, and when it is replaced in the pack, you
shuffle the cards several times, giving the egg to the person who drew
the card, and while he is breaking it, you privately withdraw the long
card, that it may appear, upon examining the cards, to have gone from
the pack into the egg. This may be rendered more surprising by having
several eggs, in each of which is placed a card of the same sort, and
then giving the person the liberty to choose which egg he thinks fit.
This deception may be still further diversified, by having, as most
public performers have, a confederate, who is previously to know the
egg in which the card is placed; for you may then break the other
eggs, and show that the only one that contains a card is that in which
you directed it to be.
_The Card discovered by the Touch or Smell._
You offer the long card, or any other that you know, and as the person
who has drawn it holds it in his hand, you pretend to feel the pips or
figure on the under side, by your fore-finger; or you sagaciously
smell to it, and then pronounce what card it is.
If it be the long card, you may give the pack to the person who drew
it, and leave him at liberty either to replace it or not. Then taking
the pack, you feel immediately whether it be there or not, and,
shuffling the cards in a careless manner, without looking at them, you
pronounce accordingly.
_The Inverted Cards._
Prepare a pack of cards, by cutting one end of them about one-tenth of
an inch narrower than the other; then offer the pack to any one, that
he may draw a card; place the pack on the table, and observe carefully
if he turn the card while he is looking at it; if he do not, when you
take the pack from the table, you offer the other end of it for him to
insert that card; but if he turn the card, you then offer him the same
end of the pack. You afterwards offer the cards to a second or third
person, for them to draw or replace a card in the same manner. You
then let any one shuffle the cards, and, taking them again into your
own hand, as you turn them up one by one, you easily perceive by the
touch which are those cards that have been inverted, and, laying the
first of them down on the table, you ask the person if that card be
his; and if he say _no_, you ask the same of the second person; and if
he say _no_, you tell the third person it is his card; and so of the
second or third cards. You shall lay the pack on the table after each
person has drawn his card, and turn it dexterously in taking it up,
when it is to be turned, that the experiment may not appear to depend
on the cards being inverted.
_The Transmuted Cards._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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