Ask a person to cut the pack as often as he likes, undertaking by
weighing each card for a moment on your finger, not only to tell the
colour, but the suit and number of spots, and, if a court card, whether
it is king, queen, or knave.
Have two packs of cards exactly alike: one pack to be constantly in use
during the evening in performing your other tricks; the second, or
prepared pack, in your pocket, which take an opportunity of exchanging,
so that it may be believed that the pack of cards of which you tell the
names is the same as that you have been doing your other tricks with,
and which they must know have been well shuffled.
The manner of preparing your pack (which must be done previously) is by
the following line, which you commit to memory, the words in italics
forming the key:
Eight Kings threa-tened to save nine fair Ladies for one sick Knave.
_Eight_ _King_ _three ten_ _two seven nine five_ _Queen_ _four ace_
_six_ _Knave_.
The initial letter of the words in the line and the names of the cards
are identical. The word “threatened” is divided into two words, in order
that it may answer for the three and ten; pay attention to this, or you
may forget the ten altogether, which would set you entirely wrong. You
should likewise commit to memory the order in which the suits come, viz.
_hearts_—_spades_—_diamonds_—_clubs_.
You should now separate the different suits, and lay them on the table,
face upwards, hearts first, then spades, diamonds next, and clubs last.
Having done so, begin to sort (to yourself), according to your key: take
up the eight of hearts, placing it in the left hand face up; then the
king of spades, which you lay upon it, next the three of diamonds, next
the ten of clubs, then the two of hearts, and so on, until you finish
your line, which will terminate with the knave of hearts. You then take
up the eight of spades, and go on in the same way till you come to the
knave of spades, when you begin again with the eight of diamonds, and go
on until you come to the knave of diamonds and beginning again with the
eight of clubs, you go on until you come to the knave of clubs, which
finishes the pack, and which is now ready for use; when you have made
your exchange, and brought forward your prepared pack, hand it round to
be cut.
You now want to know the first card, as a clue to the rest; and
therefore take off the top card, and, holding it up between you and the
light, you see what the card is, saying, at the same time, that the old
way of performing the trick was by doing so, but that was very easily
detected.
Having thus obtained a knowledge of the first card, which we will
suppose to be the ten of diamonds, you then take the next card on your
finger, and, while pretending to weigh it, you have time to recollect
what is the next word in your key, to _ten’d_, which is _to_; you
consequently know that this card is a _two_; you must then recollect
what suit comes after diamonds, which is _clubs_; you, therefore,
declare the card you are now weighing on your finger to be the _two of
clubs_; the next will of course be the seven of hearts, the next to that
the nine of spades, and so on as long as you please.
_Variation._—Take a parcel of cards, suppose 40, among which insert two
long cards; let the first be, for example, the 15th, and the other the
26th from the top. Seem to shuffle the cards, and then cutting them at
the first long card, poise those you have cut off in your left hand, and
say, “there should be here fifteen cards.” Cut them again at the second
long card, and say, “There are here only eleven cards.” Then poising the
remainder, you say, “Here are fourteen cards.”