"This," he says, holding it out, "is property number One, and here," picking up a candle from his table, "is number Two. This candle is simply the _light_ and airy product of the chandler, and has not been tampered with by any _wicked_ trickster since it left his hands. And yet I propose to pass into its very centre this handkerchief."
A narrow strip of card-board, bent into semicircular form and having a round hole cut in its centre, serves as a candlestick, and in this the candle is stood.
"You can readily see," continues the performer, "that there is absolutely no chance here to gall you--no apparatus of any kind. And now to begin."
He rolls the handkerchief between his hands, and then extending his closed right hand, while the left, also closed, goes behind his back, says: "I shall now cause the handkerchief which is in my right hand to pass invisibly into that candle. That will be a miracle, and a prerequisite for a miracle is faith. You must believe that the handkerchief is in my hand."
"But," whispers a sharp-eyed, keen-witted spectator, "the handkerchief is not there. He kept it in his left hand, and has thrust it into his coat-tail pocket."
Ah, suspicious mortal, how grievously mistaken you are! As Josh Billings has wisely said, "It's better not to know so much than to know so much that's not so." The performer opens his hand and shows that the handkerchief is still there.
Again he goes through the same manipulation, and again suspicion is aroused.
"Ah, ye of little faith!" he exclaims. "There is no need of concealing my hands for such a simple trick. See! I merely roll the handkerchief, so, between my hands"--suiting the action to the word--"and on opening them we find them empty, nothing concealed in them, and nothing up my sleeves," which he bares in proof. "Where has the handkerchief gone? It has passed, as I promised it would pass, into the candle."
"Should I cut open the candle," he goes on to say, "and in it find the missing bit of silk, you would conclude that I use a prepared candle. To prove this is not so I light the candle, and from its flame I thus extract the handkerchief." Which he does.
Pretty and mysterious as this trick is, it is very simple. The handkerchief which is produced from the empty hands is concealed in a hollow metal finger, which is painted a flesh-color, and is open at the lower end, where it is cut in the following shape >. This finger is placed between the second and third fingers of the left hand, and as the performer keeps all the fingers close together, and turns his hands rapidly backward and forward when showing them to be empty, it will be a keen eye indeed that will detect the apparatus. When the hands are brought together the false finger is quickly taken off, the handkerchief is pulled out and shown to the audience. In laying the handkerchief on the table the finger is placed there with it, or is retained in the hand and afterward pocketed.