Later Day Tricks
A. Roterberg
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The Unlucky Hat
DURING a trick in which a borrowed hat is used, it will create great merriment, if the performer under pretense of ventilating the hat, deliberately proceeds to cut a round hole of some three inches in diameter in the crown of the latter, then folding back the cut piece and exposing the lining of the hat, much to the discomfiture of its owner. But as it is a poor conjurer that cannot repair the mischief he has perpetrated, our conjurer proving no exception to the rule, repairs the hat at a moment's notice, returning it to its anxious owner, who, upon very careful inspection, finds no trace whatever of the former hole.
Not wishing to mislead my reader, I will commence the explanation of the trick by owning up that there never was a hole in the crown of the hat, the entire deception consisting of the performer placing on top of the hat a round disc cut out of an old silk hat. By means of a cloth hinge, a piece of hat lining mounted on cardboard of the same size as the disc, is secured to the latter so that both discs may be folded up and appear to be one. The "fake," as already explained, is secretly placed on top of the hat, where it is maintained by pressing into the crown a couple of needle points fastened to the lower side of the second disc. A pretense is first made of cutting a round hole in the crown of the hat; if the performer possesses a knife whose blade can be pushed back into the handle, its use will be found very effective. The upper silk disc is then deliberately folded back, whereby the lower disc covered with the lining becomes visible. At some little distance the illusion is perfect and never fails to have the proper effect on the owner of the headgear. To repair the damage, the conjurer simply folds the upper disc back on the lower one and palms off both, getting rid of them by dropping them into the profonde or on the servante.
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