Ultra Card Divination

There is a fascination in the thought that the future can be foretold, and this trick capitalizes on this interest in divination. You write down the name of a card and place the memorandum to one side. A card is selected, and this is the one you prophesied.

1. Bottow a pack of cards and, holding it face upwards, count the cards into your right hand, reversing their order in the count, under pretence of making sure that it is a full deck. Note the thirty-fourth card and remember it, because this card, which will be thirty-fourth from the top of the pack after the count, is the one you will "predict."

2. Take a slip of paper and on it write the name of the thirty-fourth card. After writing the prediction, fold the slip twice and then stand it on the edges with the pencil underneath it (Fig. 19).

3. Cut off about half the pack, but not more than twenty-six cards, and have these shuffled and spread face downwards on the table.

4. Address a spectator, saying, "Kindly push a card out of the spread." When he has done so, have a second and third spectator also push out a card. Gather the rest of the cards and replace them on the pack.

5. Hand the deck to still another spectator and have him turn the first of the three cards face upwards. Instruct him to deal as many cards below it, face downwards, as may be needed to bring its value to ten. For example, if the card is a seven, he will deal three cards. If a two, he will deal eight cards. But if the card is a court card it is arbitrarily called a ten, and in this ease no cards are dealt because none are needed.

6. Have the same done with the other two cards.

7. Now tell the spectator to add the values of the three cards which were selected and deal that number of cards from the pack and place the next card aside.

8. Point out that the card has been selected in the fairest possible manner. "Before you even touched the cards," you say, "I wrote the name of a card on a slip of paper and thereafter never touched it." Lift the pencil with the slip on it and offer it to the spectator. "Will you read what I wrote?" He reads aloud the name of the card. Slowly turn the card face upwards. It is the card which you predicted!