How to burn a thread, and to make it whole again with the ashes.
It is not one of the worst tricks to burn a thread handsomely and make it whole again, the manner whereof is this: take two threads or small laces, of one foot length a piece, roll up one of them round, which will be then about the bigness of a pea, put the same between your left fore-finger and your thumb, then take the other thread, and hold it forth at length betwixt your fore-finger and thumb of each hand, holding all your fingers daintily, as young gentlewomen are taught to hold up a morsel of meat; then let one cut asunder the same thread in the middle; when that is done, put the tops of your two thumbs together, and so shall you, with less suspicion, receive the piece of thread which you hold in your right-hand, into your left, without opening of your left finger and thumb; then holding those two pieces as you did before it was cut, let these two be also cut asunder in the midst, and they conveyed again as before, until they be very short, and then roll all those ends together, and keep that ball of thread before the other in the left hand, and with a knife thrust the same into a candle, where you may hold it until the said ball of thread be burnt to ashes; then pull back the knife with your right-hand, and leave the ashes with the other ball betwixt your fore-finger and thumb of your left hand together, take pains to rub the ashes till your thread be renewed, and draw out that thread at length which you had, all this while, betwixt your fore-finger and thumb. This is not inferior to any juggler’s trick, if it be well handled, for if you are so perfect in Legerdemain, as to bestow the same ball of thread and to change it from place to place, betwixt your other fingers, as may be easily done, then it will seem very strange.
To cut a lace asunder in the middle, and to make it whole again.
By a device not much unlike the former, you may seem to cut asunder any lace that hangs about one’s neck, or any point, girdle or garter, and with a sham conjuration to make it whole, and close it together again: for the accomplishment whereof, provide if you can, a piece of the lace which you mean to cut, or at least a pattern like the same, one inch and a half long, and keeping it double privately in your left-hand, betwixt some of your fingers, near to the tips thereof, take the other lace which you mean to cut still hanging about one’s neck, and draw down your said left-hand to the bout thereof, and putting your own piece a little before the other, the end or rather middle whereof, you must hide betwixt your fore-finger and thumb, make the eye, or bout which will be seen of your own pattern; let a stander-by cut the same asunder, and it will be surely thought that the other lace is cut; which with words and fretting, you shall seem to renew, and make whole again. This if it be well handled, will seem miraculous.
How to pull innumerable ribbons out of your mouth, of what colour you please.
As for pulling ribbons out of your mouth, it is somewhat a stale jest, whereby jugglers get money from maids by selling laces by the yard, putting into their mouth one round bottom, as fast as they pull out another, and at the exact end of every yard they tie a knot so as the same rests upon their teeth, they then cut off the same, and so the beholders are double and treble deceived, seeing as much lace as will fill a hat, and the same of what colour you list; to be drawn so by even yards out of your mouth, and yet the juggler to talk as though there were nothing in his mouth.