Practice this well, and be sure you can depend upon yourself to accomplish it perfectly with the left as well as the right hand, before you try any of the following tricks in the presence of a critical audience.
Borrow of your audience two half-dollars and lay them on your table.
Next shake your sleeves and let your friends see that you have no coins hidden about you. When they are convinced that such is the case, pick up one half-dollar with the thumb and second finger of your _right hand_. Palm this in your right hand while you _pretend_ to pass it to your left, of course making a motion with the _left hand_ as if it received and still held the coin.
The right hand will then _seem_ to be empty, although still holding the half-dollar. Next pick up the other coin with the right hand, and place the hand behind you, being careful to keep the left well in front, and always in sight of your audience. Make some few remarks concerning the difficulty of the trick, and at last pronounce the magic word “Pass”; at the same time clink the two coins together, as if one had hit the other in the meeting. Then bring the right hand forward, and, opening it and the left at the same time, show that the coin has actually left the latter and entered the former, as you promised it should do.
Twenty pieces of money are necessary for this trick; and two-cent pieces, or quarters, are perhaps the most convenient sizes to use. Of these, borrow fifteen from your audience, the other five have at hand, but concerning which your friends are to know nothing.
Having borrowed them from the company, count out five, and give them to one of your audience, while to another you give ten, and after having seen that the latter counts his carefully, take those given to the first, mutter some cabalistic nonsense, and order them to pass into the hands of the one who has the ten pieces. Finally, request him to count them again, when, strange to relate, he will find that he has fifteen, instead of the ten pieces which he was supposed to have.
The trick is performed in this manner: Upon receiving the money, throw it upon a plate or box cover—the plate is the best—and passing it to the first person, request him to take five of the pieces away. Now give the remaining money, with the plate, to the second, and ask him to drop each coin as he counts it, on the plate, that all may know he has counted correctly.