Pages from card tricks you will do

qou WILL do

by W.F (RUFUS) STEELE

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CARD TRICKS YOU WILL DO

By

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W. F. (Rufus) Steele Author of Card Mysteries

Edited by

FRANK SMITH

Cover design by George Pierce, New Orleans

Copyrighted Aug. 1, 1928

Foreword Tricks with a pack of cards afford one of the easiest and most interesting forms of entertainment in existence. They are amazing and mysterious to those who witness them, yet they are within the ability of everyone.

The idea that long practice and exceptional skill are necessary in the performance of card tricks is erroneous. Some of the cleverest and most bewildering tricks are made possible by the use of subtle principles and unique methods that are easily learned, yet which are capable of deceiving the keenest and most intelligent spectator.

Such are the methods explained in this booklet. These trick? have been devised by experienced performers of card tricks—men who unde-stand the psychology of deception and who know that a clever, well-developed principle can be used to create an amazing mystery.

Each trick depends upon a special system, simplified to make it effective in actual practice. The instructions are clear and easily understood. By following them carefully and performing each trick in a convincing manner, the reader can quickly gain an enviable reputation as a master of card magic.

This booklet is not a picture book that can be looked through in half an hour —it must be carefully read to be properly understood.

Anyone who studies and masters the different card tricks in this little book ne?d never be at loss to do his bit when called upon. You will astonish your friends and add greatly to the gaiety of the gathering.

In my travels around the country I have met hundreds of amateurs and I find that they have one great fault, against which I want to especially caution my readers.

This failing is the constant repetition of their one or possiKy two tricks which usually constitute their entire repertoire. Remember that a good trick is a jewel and should be guarded as such against the depredations of the members of your audience who are ever ready to steal its lustre. The value of your trick lies in its degree of mystification, which is lessened, not augmented, by repetition. "Do that again!" cries your audience as a result of that mystification, and this is just what you should not do, at least during that performance. You have been striving to put them in just that condition—leave them there. This book affords enough material for your part of the evening's entertainment without repeating any individual trick and thus giving your audience a chance to find out how it is done. By doing a trick only once an evening, your audience gives you credit for skill which you do not possess and your glory is the greater.

The following effects have proven worth-while in actual practice and conform to the above qualifications. Some of the tricks are original with the author; but for the most part they are adaptations of o'd ideas or new applications of the old principles.

In presenting this booklet to you I have not only given complete instructions for the actual doing of the trick, but have included ''patter ideas," which I myself have used before many audiences throughout the country.

With best wishes, W. F. (RUFUS) STEELE.

Your Opening To gain the immediate interest of an audience I know of no more effective method than the ''Story of the Cards." and I suggest it for a salutatory.

Let us then presume

that you are now facing your gathering with a deck of cards in your hand, so arranged as to illustrate the different points of your story.

This arrangement you will quickly

understand as you read further and the wording you may change to suit yourself or your friends, if you so desire.

Herewith, is merely an example.

"My friends, the reason that I am ab'e to do so many wonderful things with a deck of cards is very easily understood—I know all about a deck of cards and in order that you may follow me as I pass from trick to trick, I am going to impart some of this knowledge to you.

The origin of the cards and their early history

is obscured in the maze of antiquity, but their evolution is well suggested by the following examples: Our time is divided into day and night, so we have light cards—the red—and the dark cards—the black. The year is divided into four season?—Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter—and the cards into four suits—Hearts, Clubs, Spades and Diamonds. There are thirteen lunar months in a year and thirteen cards to a suit— twelve modern calendar months and twelve face cards in a deck. Then, there are fifty-two cards in the deck and fifty-two weeks in a year—three hundred and sixtyfive days in a year and the spots on a deck of cards total that in number, the joker indicating the extra day for Leap Year. Four other features of our existence are (1) Love, represented by the Heart; (2) Wealth, represented by the Diamond; (3) Knowledge, represented by the Club, which is also the clover leaf, the first of the p'ant kingdom to show in the Spring and the last to die in the Fall; (4) Death, represented by the Spade.

But the greatest meaning to be derived from a deck of cards was taught me at the ending of the Worid War. On the 11th of November a so'.dier boy dropped in a certain church in France where he found the congregation on their knees in prayer. He knelt with them, but in his hand instead of a player book he he'd a dirty old deck of cards, over which he was mumbling incoherently. An officer of the law happened to be present, arrested the soklier. took him to the "jail house," where he was charged with disoxlerly conduct in a place of worship. He was cited to appear in court the next day and did so promptly at the time designated, listening calmly and attentively to the officer's charge of ' disorderly conduct."' When asked by the Judge if he had anything to say in his defense, he stood respectfully before the bar with the only evidence against him in his hand—the dirty deck of cards— and amid an impressive silence said: "Your honor, a deck of card? is to me both a prayer book and a Bib'e. The Ace reminds me that there is but one God, and that I shou'.d beware of strange gods before me; the Deuce, that the Bible is divided into 3

two parts, the Old and New Testaments; the Trey, that there are three persons in the Blessed Trinity—the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost; the Four, ot the tour great Evangelists who wrote the Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke and John; the Five, of the five Wise Virgins, who kept their lamps trimmed against the coming of the Lord; the six, of the six days of Creation; the Seven, of the Sabbath, the day of rest and worship; the Eight, of the ei^ht Righteous Persons saved from the Flood—Noah, his wife, their three sons and their wives; the Nine, of the Nine Lepers who were cleansed but did not return thanks, such was their ingratitude; the Ten, not only of the Tenth Leper who did return thanks, but of the Ten Commandments handed down to Moses on Tab'.ets of Stone; the Jack or the Knave, of the Devil and to shun his temptation; the Queen, of the Mother of Christ, our tainted nature's solitary boast; and the King, of the King of Heaven and Earth and All Things, to whom we should all bow down and worship." There was not a dry eye in the court room as the judge acquitted the soldier and abruptly adjourned court.

Thus, my friends, you may see that a deck of cards is a Bible as well as an almanac, and now we proceed to the realm of the mysterious where it is said, "The hand is quicker than the eye and the more you look the less you see and the more you wonder."

NOTE: The author in presenting the story of a deck of cards has often used a short jest when he is speaking of the Queen instead of saying 'The Queen is the Mother of Christ," I have always tried to avoid the solemn part of this story and so have added a little mirth by saying, "The Queen reminds me of the Queen of Sheba, who was wise but not as wise as Old Man Solomon, for she brought fifty boys and fifty girls dressed in boys' apparel for the King to decide which were boys and which were girls. The King sent for water and had them all wa.h and the girls washed to their elbows and the boys to their wrists, so he told by that.'' This always got me a laugh.

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Knockout Counting Trick i /• Give spectator pack and tell him to count off any number, say six, /and to note the sixth card. Tell him he can use any number, but keep it low—under fifteen.

He does this and replaces cards. You do not see him do it.

Pick up pack, put it behind your back and count fifteen cards from top, putting them on the bottom. No one knows what you are doing.

Give pack to spectator and tell him to count off the same number that he counted before (suppose six) but this time put the cards on the bottom.

He gives you the pack again. Behind your back count fifteen cards from the bottom and put them on top, just reversing your previous system. Ask him to name his card. He does so, and you show him the bottom card. It is his card.

Why this works: Suppose you look at one card and put it on the top. Then deal it again and put it on the bottom. Same thing works in any number, but in dealing, a person would see what he was doing. However by shifting a certain number like fifteen from top to bottom, the chosen card does not show in the next deal. When you shift them back you merely replace fifteen cards you took away.

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