WeRead Powered by ReaderPub
Hocus Pocus; or The Whole Art of Legerdemain, in Perfection. / By which the meanest capacity may perform the whole without the help of a teacher. Together with the Use of all the Instruments belonging thereto. cover

Hocus Pocus; or The Whole Art of Legerdemain, in Perfection. / By which the meanest capacity may perform the whole without the help of a teacher. Together with the Use of all the Instruments belonging thereto.

Chapter 14: How to cut the blowing book.
Open in WeRead

Explore more books like this:

About This Book

A practical manual lays out the techniques and stagecraft of sleight of hand, teaching how to perform common experiments with balls, coin and money tricks, card manipulations, and cooperative confederate routines. It gives step-by-step procedures for classic effects such as the cups and balls and for operating luminous projection devices, with notes on specialized apparatus, concealment, and misdirection. Emphasis is placed on posture, gestures, scripted patter, and timing to distract observers, and on adapting simple props to produce surprising transformations. The instructions aim to enable readers of modest skill to learn and present entertaining feats.

How to cut the blowing book.

Take a book seven inches long, and about five inches broad, and let there be forty-nine leaves, that is, seven times seven, contained therein, so as you may cut upon the edges of each leaf six notches, each notch in depth of a quarter of an inch, with a gouge made for that purpose, and let them be one inch distant; paint every thirteenth and fourteenth page, which is the end of every sixth leaf and beginning of every seventh, with like colours, or pictures; cut off with a pair of sheers, every notch of the first leaf, leaving only one inch of paper, which will remain half a quarter of an inch above that leaf; leave another like inch in the second part of the second leaf, clipping away an inch of paper in the highest place above it, and all notches below the same, and orderly to the third and fourth, and so as there shall rest upon each leaf only one nick of paper above the rest, one high uncut, an inch of paper must answer to the first directly, so as when you have cut the first seven leaves in such a manner as I have described, you are to begin the self same order at the eighth leaf, descending the same manner to the cutting the other seven leaves to twenty-one, until you are past through every leaf all the thickness of your book, &c.

This feat is sooner learn’d by demonstrative means, than taught by words of instruction; so, if any person wants to be furnished with these blowing books, they may have them at my shop on Little-towerhill, aforesaid.