pages: latestmagicbeing00hoff.pdf, 66
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latestmagicbeing00hoff.pdf | 66 | 50 LATEST MAGIC Presentation. Advance, palming off the knave of clubs, and offer pack to be shuffled. When it is returned, force the knave on one of the company. Borrow a hat, and after showing that it is empty, place it, crown downwards, on the table. Receive back the drawn card upon the mat, remarking that you will place it in the hat, which you do accord- ingly, the other three knaves going in with it. Then, assuming a worried expression, deliver pat- ter to something like the following effect. "I am afraid, ladies and gentlemen, that I shall not be able to show you the experiment I had intended. I have a telepathic nerve in my left thumb, a sort of private fire alarm, only more so, which always gives me warning when things are going wrong, and I feel it now. If you have read 'Macheth,' you will remember that one of the witches says: 'By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes.' "I have often wondered whether that old lady could have been a sort of great-great-great grand- mother of mine. Magic certainly runs in the family, and we may have inherited it from her. Anyhow, I have just the same sort of sensation myself. Unfortunately, in my case the warning is incomplete. I dare say you will remember that story (I rather think it's in Macaulay's 'Lays of Ancient Rome'), about Little Queen Cole. Her |