The Vanishing Cigarette
By Jarrow

IN SOME ways a trick is like a joke. For instance, audiences laugh harder at an old joke with a new twist than they do at a brand new joke. The same thing is true in a trick. If the audience thinks it knows what is going to happen, maybe even thinks it knows how it happens. and then is fooled, everyone remembers that trick and talks about it. That is a really good trick.

Do not say to yourself that this trick is old and just a bit different from the one where the magician spreads a handkerchief over one fist, pokes a little pocket in it, drops the lighted cigarette butt inside, then shakes out the handkerchief to show that the butt is gone. Sure it is like it. But partly because it is like it, and partly because it is different, it is a fine trick. It is the sort of thing that makes an audience gasp.

The magician lights a cigarette, he shows his hands to be empty, then he makes a fist of his left hand. He takes the full length lighted cigarette with his right hand and puts it, lighted end down, into his fist. He takes his right hand away and fans the left fist. Slowly he opens his left hand, the cigarette is gone. Both hands are empty.

Using a bare hand, rather than a handkerchief, makes the trick look better to the audience. The cigarette was vanished in a thumb tip, but how do you get a full length cigarette in an inch long thumb tip? That is the new part of the trick and the part which makes it stand out in the minds of the audience. Not that they know about the thumb tip, but the cigarette is so big it seems impossible to hide -- but they saw it vanish.

Preparation: Carefully pull the tobacco from one end of a cigarette until only about three-quarters of the tobacco is left. Roll a piece of paper, two inches long and one inch wide, into a tube. Insert this in the open end of the cigarette. The paper should be just a trifle heavier than the cigarette paper. This will make a fake cigarette that can be handled like an ordinary cigarette, but when pushed into a thumb tip will crush up so that it will take but little space.

The best way to take tobacco out of a cigarette is to ran it between your hands and squeeze one end. This will loosen the tobacco so that it will fall out. If you make up several cigarettes at once you will always be prepared to perform the trick. Naturally because of the fire, you must use a metal-not a celluloid-thumb tip.

Put the prepared cigarette in the pack, tobacco end down. You can recognize it immediately. When you are ready to perform put it in your mouth. When you put the cigarette package back in your pocket you steal the thumb tip. After the vanish, reach into your coat pocket for your handkerchief, wipe your mouth and return the handkerchief to your pocket. When getting the handkerchief leave the thumb tip and all it contains behind in the pocket.