To render the idea of palming an apparent impossibility, take up the candle in your right hand. This will render the holding of the coin less troublesome, and appear to your audience as a conclusive evidence that the half-dollar is in your left hand.
After you have pretended to place the coin in your left hand, do not for an instant forget to appear as if it really was there, and keep that hand always in sight of your audience.
Having taken the lighted candle in your right, hold the left hand above the flame, and move the fingers as if allowing the silver to pass down, drop by drop, into the candle itself. If, just before this, previous to taking the candle, you could catch up the glass for a drink and drop a spoonful of water into the hollow of your left hand, the dropping of it into the candle-flame would add to the impression of melting silver. You can wet your hand slightly in many natural ways, as no one would imagine the water had anything to do with the trick. Continue to pretend to drop the silver, until it would naturally be gone; then, without removing your hand, open it and announce that the half-dollar is melted, and can be found in the candlestick; assuring the donor that he need not be alarmed, as you can bring it out as it was before it went in, if he will but have patience.
Put the candlestick down upon the table, and pretend to pick out bits of silver from the various parts of it with the right hand, placing them as they are gathered in the palm of the left hand. At a convenient moment, when the right is exactly above the left hand, drop the half-dollar into it, and the trick is done. But it would not do to let the audience know this, so you must continue to work the left hand as if molding the coin in shape, blowing with the mouth into the palm as if cooling the heated mass; toss it from hand to hand as if to cool it more rapidly, and finally return it to the spectator from whom it was borrowed.
The young performer will find but little difficulty in performing this simple sleight-of-hand trick successfully. A lighted candle, a small stick, or magic wand, and a piece of thin cambric or muslin about six inches square, are the materials required.
Place the lighted candle on your table, and the wand on another table or shelf some distance from the former with the bit of cambric behind it.