You profess that you will make a sixpence appear to pass through the
table. To perform this feat, you must have a handkerchief, in one
corner of which is sewed a sixpence.—Take it out of your pocket, and
ask one of the company to lend you a sixpence, which you must seem to
carefully wrap up in the middle of the handkerchief, but instead of
which, you keep it in the palm of your hand, and in its stead, wrap up
the corner in which the other sixpence is sewed, in the midst of the
handkerchief, and bid the person from whom you borrowed the sixpence,
feel that it is there. You then lay it under a hat upon the table, take
a glass in the hand in which you have concealed the sixpence, and hold
it under the table. Give three knocks upon the table, crying “Presto!
come quickly!” Then drop the sixpence into the glass; bring the glass
from under the table, and exhibit the sixpence to the spectators. You
lastly take the handkerchief from under the hat, and shake it, taking
care to hold it by the corner in which the sixpence was sewed.