Take a common ring, about the size of a wedding-ring, and suspend it to
the centre of your handkerchief by a piece of cotton four inches long.
You can hold the handkerchief up by the corners with the ring hanging in
front of you, and the latter will not be noticed. Then let the
handkerchief fall over your left hand and the ring in your palm. Request
the loan of a wedding-ring, and, having obtained one, put it under the
handkerchief, drop it in your palm, and pick up the other ring, which
push up in the centre of the handkerchief, requesting some one to hold
it there. Next take a drinking-glass in your right hand and request the
person to drop the ring in it and the handkerchief over it. Shake the
glass, and the ring will be heard to rattle inside. Then stand the glass
in the palm of your left hand with its bottom over the borrowed ring,
which is concealed there. With your right hand pinch the centre of the
handkerchief and lift it up quickly, of course, carrying the suspended
ring with it, being very careful not to let the ring strike the glass.
The glass is seen to be empty; lift it up and show the ring underneath.
Say, "You see, the ring has passed through the bottom of the tumbler."
A similar and a better trick can be performed with a short cane--say
about eighteen inches long--instead of a glass. Commence as in the
previous trick, and after you have asked some one to hold the suspended
ring through the handkerchief, show the cane, and, holding your left
hand back upward, push it through the latter and the borrowed ring, and
grasp the cane with, of course, the ring on it, in the centre. With your
right hand take the ring and handkerchief from the person who holds
them, and request him to take hold of each end of the cane. Now lower
the handkerchief until it hides your left hand, when you must move the
latter away, leaving the ring on the cane concealed by the handkerchief.
Then let the suspended ring fall out of the handkerchief, and if it
strikes the cane so much the better. Whip the handkerchief away, and the
ring on the cane will be seen. How that ring could have got on the cane
while the ends of the latter were being held will puzzle everybody.
Pocket the handkerchief with the suspended ring at once, and don't allow
it to be examined.