Card Tricks

• The Exclusive Coterie
• The Divining Rod
• The Invisible Flight
• The Prearranged Deck
• The Travelling Cards
• The Row of Ten Cards
• The Acrobatic Jacks
• A Mind Reading Trick
• Power of Concentrated Thought
• The Acme of Control
• The Card and Handkerchief
• The Top and Bottom Production
• The Three Aces
• The Card and Hat

IT IS not our purpose to describe the various kinds of apparatus, or prepared or mechanical cards, that play so great a part in the professional conjurer’s startling exhibitions. The enumeration alone of these devices would fill a volume twice this size; and anyway they would be of little service to the amateur for impromptu entertainment. But we shall describe some tricks that may be performed with an ordinary deck, under any circumstances, providing the necessary skill has been acquired to execute the sleights. However, the artist who has attained some degree of proficiency in manipulation as taught by this work, may by taxing his wits a little, devise no end of tricks for himself, with the advantage that they will not be “shop worn” articles.

The simplest sleight, if well rigged up with either plausible or nonsensical clap-trap, may be made to provide a most astonishing and elaborate card trick; whereas, if the sleight be exhibited alone, the effect is not at all commensurate with the time and labor spent in acquiring the skill. Conceal, as far as possible, the possession of digital ability, and leave the company still guessing how it is done.

For some of the following tricks we have invented names and garnished them up with a rigmarole merely to show the part that “Patter” plays in card entertainments. Our readers essaying the tricks should compose their own monologue, so that it may be in keeping with their particular personality or style of address.