Magical Originalities
Ernest E. Noakes
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The Cigarette TableTHIS chapter I will devote to a trick which is known as my "Cigarette Trick," but when I am performing to children, instead of using cigarettes and cigars, I use small biscuits and a packet of chocolate. As most of my readers will be more likely to work to drawing-room audiences, I will explain the details with the biscuits and chocolate, and those who prefer to use the cigarettes can of course use them instead of the biscuits, and cigars in the place of the chocolate. The effect I give first.
The performer shows a glass containing small biscuits (or the like), which he empties on to a card-board plate to show that the glass is quite natural. The biscuits are then replaced and the glass placed upon the table. Next a card-board cylinder is given for examination and is placed upon a plate, with another plate on top. These are stood upon the piano or other suitable place.
Picking up a piece of newspaper he covers the glass with it and brings it forward and requests someone to hold it, but the paper is crumpled up and the contents have vanished. On taking the plate off the top of the cylinder and lifting the cylinder up, the glass and contents are seen standing on the bottom plate.
The performer now gives away the contents of the glass, and then thinks it would be as well also to give away the means of working the trick, so he says he will use the empty glass and show them how it was done! He again shows the cylinder, places it on the plate, the other plate on top as before, and stands them at some distance away. He now takes a piece of paper, covers the glass, goes through the same moves, and discovers that the empty glass has vanished. He says he did not expect the empty glass to vanish so soon, but his glass is so highly trained, etc. etc. When he lifts the plate and cylinder up, there is the glass again with a similar quantity of contents as the first load!
The contents are again given away, and as the trick worked quicker than he meant, he will show them again. The plates and cylinder are again examined, arranged, and placed as before. He looks for more paper, but he has used the two pieces he has brought for the trick so offers to use a handkerchief. To make the empty glass wait this time until he is ready, he stands it on a small brass ash tray. The handkerchief is thrown over the glass and he brings it forward, holding the tray at his finger-tips, draped by the handkerchief. Just as he reaches the audience the glass is seen to topple, a grab is made, but the glass has vanished! Performer looks around him and not seeing the glass goes to the cylinder, and finds therein the glass with a packet of chocolates, which he gives to some member of the audience.
I have purposely left out directions as to presentation, as every performer has his own style. I generally have two children to assist me, and they get the first two loads for helping me, and the lady I have worried most to examine things I request to state which she prefers, "chocolates or biscuits?" She chooses chocolates, and the third production is then in accordance with her choice, and the produced carton of chocolate is lifted from the glass, the tissue-paper removed, and the packet handed to her on one of the cardboard plates.
The requirements for working are the items mentioned above, with a duplicate glass loaded with biscuits, and the faked table. As in the previous tricks, the table "does the work." The table has one black art well only, deep enough to take a glass without it being seen. This well is hidden throughout the performance by moving the card-board plates as required. The lifting of the glass up, so that the performer can grasp it in the cylinder, is accomplished by having a piece of wood about 8 inches long and 1-1/2 inch wide. This is slung under the table by means of short strings near its middle to act as a hanging fulcrum. One end protrudes at the back of the table to be used to bear down on, and the other end is slung by means of two strings, one at each corner, so that it permits the servante to be at its full length, but when the outer end is borne down upon, the end under the bottom of the servante of the black art well is forced up, causing the glass to rise about half its length, which enables the performer, when the cylinder is over the well, to grasp the top of the glass with his fingers inside the cylinder, and he stands the cylinder on the plate, with the duplicate glass with biscuits in, inside. The other plate is placed on top and the lot stood away. This leaves the well empty, and the first glass which had the biscuits in is stood just in front of the well. The newspaper is formed around the glass and it is vanished into the well, and the paper brought forward.
The "flight" is now worked, the contents of the second glass given away, and the "explanation" started. The cylinder is again placed for a moment over the well and loaded, stood on plate, and then placed away. The empty glass vanishes as before, and the "same glass full of biscuits" is produced from the cylinder.
Whilst the attention of the audience is drawn to the giving away of the biscuits, performer picks up a card-board plate, and under cover of this grasps the carton of chocolates with the same hand and loads it from back of the table into the empty glass in the well. This loading cannot possibly be seen by the audience, as the plate covers the load all the time. The cylinder is again examined, placed over the well, and the glass levered up, and the whole lot placed away as before. Now the request is made of biscuits or chocolates. The empty glass is stood on the ash-tray just against the well, and the handkerchief, which has the usual disc sewn in it, is placed over the glass. Under cover of the handkerchief, the empty glass is servanted, and the performer picks up the disc in his left hand, quickly balances it on the end of the ash-tray, and holds the other end of the ash-tray between his outstretched fingers, giving the appearance of the glass being actually standing on the tray in the usual way. This is a most surprising effect, as the glass is apparently seen to topple over and the performer grabs at the handkerchief. Having vanished the glass (for the last time) he "imagines" the lady must have been in a great hurry to see if the chocolates would materialise. The plate with cylinder on is brought down to her, the top plate lifted off, and the chocolates given to the lady.
I may say that I get plenty of fun out of this trick, and it has a very important point which , many of us must appreciate--it can be made to last from ten to twenty minutes, and keeps the audience well amused all the time, and it is a great help to long shows. The carton of chocolate is on a small tin shelf under the table, so arranged that the fingers can easily pick it up underneath the plate when about to load it into the glass in the well.
In conclusion, I have tried to place my tricks before my readers, so that they can adopt what seems good to them and "get right on with it." I have written just as the ideas came before me and described the points as if talking to an interested listener. Every trick and move I have mentioned I have personally tested, and many of them have been very good friends to me. In my handkerchief colour change, for instance, the explanation is somewhat lengthy and when described in writing seems "nothing much." If you have not seen me work it, or heard of the misdirection it commands you cannot imagine what a "haver" it is. I have had a drawing-room full of the most select and prim people, actually shouting to me "the other hand," and although I have shown them that my right hand was empty, the back of the left, the front of the left--not of course knowing just what they wanted they would insist upon "opening the left hand." When they arrived at this precise question, I did open my hand, and they "smiled loudly" at being done.
As many performers before me have discovered, it is not what you do, but how you do your audience that counts. Having described some of my personal tricks, I do not wish my reader to imagine that I "taboo" any of the hundreds of good tricks that exist I have had good fun with the Sliding Die Box, the Rabbit Saucepan, and the Dove Pan, not forgetting the "Cake in the Hat," as I still have the actual fakes that were used by a "brother magician," who used them getting on for forty years ago, when one of the best received tricks was the "Sun and Moon," with a red and white cotton handkerchief. I have purposely refrained from mention of any names in my book, although sorely tempted to mention my appreciation of "The Guvnor" (the Grand Old Man of English Magic), and others of the same firmament.
End of Magical Originalities.
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