lacing those three,
and show a person that the bottom card is the seven of hearts. This
card you dexterously slip aside with your finger, which you have
previously wetted, and, taking the king of spades from the bottom,
which the person supposes to be the seven of hearts, lay it on the
table, telling him to cover it with his hand.

Shuffle the cards again, without displacing the first and last card,
and, shifting the other king of spades from the top to the bottom,
show it to another person. You then draw that privately away, and,
taking the bottom card, which will then be the seven of hearts, you
lay that on the table, and tell the second person (who believes it to
be the king of spades) to cover it with his hand.

You then command the cards to change places; and when the two parties
take off their hands and turn up the cards, they will see, to their
great astonishment, that your commands are obeyed.

_The Three Magical Parties._

Offer the long card to a person, that he may draw it, and replace it
in any part of the pack he pleases. _Make the pass_, and bring that
card to the top. Next divide the pack in three parcels, putting the
long card in the middle heap. You then ask the person which of the
three heaps his card shall be in. He will, probably, say the middle;
in which case you immediately show it to him. But if he say either of
the others, you take all the cards in your hand, placing the parcel he
has named over the other two, and observing to put your little finger
between that and the middle heap, at the top of which is the card he
drew. You then ask at what number in that heap he will have his card
appear. If, for example, he say the sixth, you tell down five cards
from the top of the pack, and then, dexterously making the pass, you
bring the long card to the top, and tell it down as the sixth.

_The Magic Vase._

Construct a vase of wood, or pasteboard, see Fig. 20. On the inside
let there be five divisions; two of them, _c d_, to be large enough to
admit a pack of cards each; and the other three, _e f g_, only large
enough to contain a single card. Place this vase on a bracket, L,
which is fastened to the partition M. Fix a silken thread at H, the
other end of which passes down the division _d_, and, over the pulley
I, runs along the bracket L, and goes out behind the partition M.

[Illustration: Fig. 20.]

Take three cards from the piquet pack, and place one of them in each
of the divisions _e