in it privately; then, unseen, place this beyond your right ear; but
let not the sponge be too big, or too full of liquor, lest you be
discovered. Now, taking a knife, stick it, with the handle upwards, in
a table or stool (but observe to place your company before you); then
bid them look, saying, “_There you see is nothing of wet, either on
this handle or the table_;” so stretch your empty hand towards your
ear, darting the point, saying, “_Now, somebody cross my arm_,” and,
speaking some powerful words, as “_Jubio bisco_,” then you have a fair
opportunity to take the sponge into your hand from behind your ear;
stretching forth your hand, squeeze it gently, and afterwards a little
harder, which will make it run the faster, to the amazement of the
company, at the same time saying, “_Thus could I do till I had drowned
you all._” Then sprinkle a little in their faces, which will cause them
to shut their eyes, whilst you convey away the sponge.
_To cut a Glass by Heat._
You must have a piece of well-dried match-cord. Having lighted it by
the candle, take a beer-glass, and hold the match to the edge of the
glass; now have your finger ready wetted, and, when the glass is very
hot, clap your finger to the hot place, and it will suddenly crack
about a quarter of an inch downward; then keep the coal of the match
at the like distance from the end of the crack; and, as it follows, so
move your hand, and cut it screw-fashion, otherwise it will not hold
together till you have it through to the bottom. When you have done it,
and it is cold, take it by the foot, and turn it downwards: it will
stretch so that you may put your finger between each cutting; then,
when you turn it up again, you may drink a glass of beer from it, and
not spill a drop.
THE END.
PRINTED BY G. H. DAVIDSON,
IRELAND YARD, DOCTORS’ COMMONS.
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant
preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced
quotation marks retained.
Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained; occurrences of
inconsistent hyphenation have not been changed.
The original mid-paragraph positions of Illustrations have been
retained in this eBook, as they often are crucial to understanding the
explanations.
The original Table of Contents used “ib.” for page numbers that were the
same as the preceding number, but this eBook uses the actual numbers.
Page 42: “then put the” was printed as “then pu- the”. It has been
changed to “put” to be consistent with “put out the sixpence” at the
end of the same paragraph. Both probably should be “pull”.
Page 61: “grove” was printed that way.
Page 68: Transcriber added “turn” to “turn the perfect colour of sack
wine”.
Page 70: “mattrass” was printed that way.
Page 75: “griping” was printed that way.
The bottom of the image of a bottle on page 76 was cut-off in the
original book.