Laurant Cashes His Own Check
By Eugene Laurant

WHENEVER I am called upon to present a stunt at a banquet, I usually tell a story about how I was once obliged to cash my own check. "Most of us," I say, "have experienced difficulty in attempting to cash a check in a city in which we are a stranger. This once happened to me and someone said, 'But you are a magician. Why don't you cash your own check?'

"Frankly. this thought had never occurred to me before so I decided to see what could be done. I made out a check to myself for the sum of five dollars. I tore It in pieces and wrapped it in a square of paper. I touched a match to ft. the wrapping vanished, and there was a five-dollar bill. As I tell the story I suit action to the words. The trick is prepared as follows: A five-dollar bill is crumpled, wrapped in a piece of flash paper and put in my left coat pocket, along with a box of matches.

I fill out a check to myself and wrap it in a piece of paper that matches the flash paper. I hand it to someone to hold. I take out the match box and under it, secretly, I bring along the flash-paper-wrapped five-dollar bill. I remove a match and strike it. This I hold with my right hand. I reach with that hand for the paper-wrapped check. I pass it to my left hand and hold it against the top of the match box. I call attention to a plate and apparently drop the wrapped check on it. Actually I drop the flash-paper- wrapped five spot. I get rid of the other packet when I drop the match box in my left coat pocket. A touch of the match to the flash paper and it vanishes in a brilliant flame, leaving behind the fivedollar bill.

I think this idea was first suggested to me by my old friend Stewart Judah of Cincinnati. I first presented it at a Rotary Club luncheon. After that I frequently used it as a publicity stunt.