Ask your audience to be seated, while you talk for a few minutes on the
wonders of occult science. Having mystified them as much as possible,
you arouse their curiosity by announcing that you are now prepared to
state whatever they may choose to draw or write, provided the sentence
is a short one, by pressing the words or picture against your forehead,
instead of reading with the eye.
You then distribute lead pencils, and equal sized slips of paper to
all who wish to try, and take your seat at a table, on which you put a
work-basket, with the request that when they are finished, they will
fold the papers over once and then drop them in the basket.
When this is done you draw out any paper you may first touch; unfolding
it so that you cannot read, you press it against your forehead, being
careful to cover the entire paper with the fingers of each hand, which
touch each other. You must explain that this contact is necessary for
your revelation. After some minutes spent in thought, you read it and
immediately draw another paper, laying each one before you, behind the
basket.
The trick is simple, and consists in reading any word or sentence which
may first occur to you, for the first paper, but reading the words
thereon, or noting the picture when you lay it behind the basket. The
picture or words on the first paper are read for the second, the second
read for the third, and so on, until the last one has been pressed to
the forehead, in removing which it is hidden by being crushed in the
hand, or in whichever way may prove the easiest at the time, as the
last paper is a necessity to make up for the one you falsely read.
It is not often that this trick is detected, unless it is bunglingly
shown, and for that there is no excuse, as it is ridiculous to exhibit
magic without long and careful practice.
Always change as much as possible the method of exhibition and never
show this feat twice in one evening. Remember that diversion is an
important feature in all magical entertainment; therefore you should
be a capital story-teller, have a fund of funny stories on which you
call at a moment’s need, for the attention of your friends must be
constantly turned from your nervousness.
Every one understands that they are being deceived. You must be a
clever magician or they will discover how.