FAMILY FUN

New Zealand Tablet, 14 August 1913, Page 62

FAMILY FUN

TRICKS AND ILLUSIONS. ! —" .' . Oaf (Special to the N.Z. Tablet by Mahatma.) -* IL A Card Trick. The performer undertakes to examine a person in respect to his (or her) knowledge of a pack of cards. Having obtained a voluntary assis- \ tant, he requests him to answer a few questions quickly —'How many cards in ah ordinary pack?' 'Fiftytwo.' 'Quite correct. I will write the name of one on this piece of paper.' Performer writes, say, 'king of diamonds.' He does not let the assistant see this name. How many suits in a pack?' Four.' Right again. What are the colors?' 'Two black and two red.' 'Correct. Which-do your prefer, the black or the red ' Red.' ' I thought so —the color most cheerful people would select.' (If black had been chosen the performer would have said, ' Thank you, that leaves me with the red.') 'Now, there are two reu suitshearts and diamonds. Will you select one?' ' Diamonds.' ' You are wise" Hearts are quite out of fashion in fact, it is considered bad taste to have one—so likely to lead to complications.' (If hearts had been chosen the performer would have said ' Thank you, that leaves diamonds.') 'Now how many cards are there in the diamond suit?' 'Thirteen.' 'Quite right. And which will you have, the ordinary plain cards or the court cards? You prefer the court cards. Now, in the court there are four important people—king, queen, knave, and ace. Which two out of the four do you prefer?' ' The king and ace.' ' And which one. of these will you take?' If the king be chosen, continue, ' We will now examine the name on this sheet of paper. See, I have the name of the card written down.' If the acejhad been finally chosen the performer would have said ' Thank you, that leaves the king. We will now. examine the paper.' Thus, the performer has, by ambiguous , questioning, made the assistant tell him the name which he (the performer) wrote on the paper. It will be seen that the assistant has really no choice at all. If the name of the card written down is the queen of diamonds, and the assistant chooses hearts all the performer has to do is to —the more rapidly the better—' That leaves me with diamonds to go on with.' The effect is really mystifying. The Three Colors.— liquids are of different densities may be easily shown by taking a glass and pouring into it successively water colored blue, ordinary oil, and alcohol of a red luxe. These three liquids will remain stationary in layers and present to the eye the colors of the national flag. Call attention to the fact that the density of water being 1, the densities of the olive oil and of the alcohol are .0915 and .0795 respectively, for the three liquids superpose themselves in the order of their diminishing density. Magic Reading.—This is one of the finest drawingroom illusions that one could wish for. The method is as follows:—The performer asks several people to write each a sentence on a slip of paper and seal it in an envelope. One of the audience is a confederate of the performer and writes on his slip a sentence agreed upon before the commencement of the illusion. When the papers are collected the performer is careful to place the one written by his confederate at the bottom. He goes back to the platform and with as much ceremony as he is able to command lakes up an envelope. He then calls out the sentence upon the paper enclosed. This, of course, is the sentence written by the confederate. He tears open the envelope which he holds, and pretends to repeat the sentence from the paper. This is declared to be correct by his aforesaid confederate. The paper, of course, belongs to anothe member of the audience, and he reads what is upon th. and memorises it. He takes up a second envelope an u "calls out the sentence which he*has just seen. He tears the second envelope open and again repeats the sentence, in reality again reading another person's paper. So the performer goes on till he comes to the end of the papers. The last one is, of course, the paper -which his assistant wrote, but he reads out the message which he saw on the second to last paper.