The performer commences by borrowing three lady’s rings. These he collects on a little stick, and thence pours them into a tumbler, which is handed to a spectator for safe-keeping. He next borrows a tall hat, but when about to place it on his table, notices that the owner has left something in it. This proves to be an egg, which is handed to another spectator. After turning up the lining of the hat,
“that it may not get damaged,” he leaves it on the table. Taking back the egg, he breaks it into a nickel-plated goblet, and beats it up with the stick on which the rings were collected. Then, advanc-ing with both hands extended, but the one with the goblet the more advanced, he says to the person holding the rings: “Drop them in here.” He naturally drops them into the goblet. The performer pre-tends that that was not what he meant, that he wanted them dropped, not into the cup, but into the disengaged hand. Finally, however, he says: “Well, it can’t be helped. So much the worse for the hat! They have got to go in, anyhow.”
So saying, he pours the contents of the goblet into the hat, adding to the discomfort of the owner by passing his fingers round the inside edge of the cup; and apparently wiping them on the hat-lining.
When he thinks he has sufficiently “piled on the agony,” he discovers that things have turned out better than he had expected. Dipping his hand into the hat, he lifts out by a loop of ribbon a circlet of flowers, six inches in diameter, from which, on three swivel hooks, hang the borrowed rings. Below them in the centre, attached to another swivel, hangs a dome-topped cage containing a couple of liv-ing canaries, professedly the product of the egg. The rliv-ings are detached, and returned to the owners, the first two in the ordinary way. When, however, the performer is about to return the third, it some-how vanishes from his fingers, and finds its way into his pocket, from which it is in due course pro-duced. This last is, of course, a mere effect of palming, in the apparent transfer from right hand to left, or vice versa.
In preparing for the trick, the egg to be produced is placed in the performer’s right sleeve. The mo-ment the arm is lowered it runs down into the hand, and is then introduced into the hat, though, ac-cording to his patter, the performer has discovered its presence there some moments earlier. The egg having been taken out, and handed to a spectator, the operator places the hat on his table, and under cover of the turn for that purpose loads into it the cage, taken from a pocket in the left breast of his coat.
The cage is constructed as follows: Each pair of wires is joined at bottom, being in fact a single wire bent into a long straight loop, like an exaggerated hair-pin, and having its ends attached, by small eyelets, to the upper part of the cage. The bottom, when the cage is expanded, rests upon the loop end (which is bent square) of each pair of wires, but can be moved up along them to within about two inches of the top. The wire may be then folded down upon the bottom, in which condition the cage occupies very little space. At its extreme top is a little cup, closed by a hinged lid, for the recep-tion, at the proper time, of the beaten egg.
The flowers forming the wreath are artificial, and are wired on to a brass hoop, bearing the three swivels for the reception of the rings, and a fourth for the suspension of the cage. This hoop rests at the onset on the top of the cage. There is a piece of ribbon loosely crossing the hoop for the purpose of lifting it out of the hat. When this is done, the cage naturally follows, the bottom sinking by its own weight to its normal position, where it fixes itself by means of three little spring catches.
The stick on which the borrowed rings are collected, and which is afterwards used to beat up the egg, is of boxwood, ten inches in length, and in appearance not unlike the piston of a child’s pop-gun. It is, however, not quite so innocent as it looks. A glance at the sectional view given in Fig. 45 will enable the reader to understand its construction. In the handle portion is excavated, round the
stick proper, a cavity deep enough to contain three finger-rings. In this space are beforehand placed three dummy rings, threaded one after another upon the stick, the cavity being then closed by pass-ing over the stick and pushpass-ing home the tubular plug a, which just fits the openpass-ing. The borrowed rings having been collected on this stick, the performer, with the forefinger and thumb of the hand which holds it, loosens the plug. The opposite hand then draws off the plug, and with it the bor-rowed rings, the substitutes taking their place upon the stick. It is therefore the dummies which are handed for safe-keeping, and are ultimately dropped into the beaten egg.
Meanwhile, the performer, under cover of turning up the leather lining of the hat, hooks the three borrowed rings upon the appropriate swivels. The trick is now practically done. All that the wizard has to do is to pour the egg and the dummy rings into the hat (really into the cup at top of bird-cage), lift out the cage, and return the rings.
The palming and production from the pocket of the last ring are, of course, optional, but they bring the trick to an effective conclusion.
In connection with the subject of “egg and hat”
tricks, I may mention a special goblet occasionally used by Hartz in tricks of this class, as it differs to some extent from most others used for the same pur-pose. This is a handsome nickel-plated cup standing four and a half inches high, as a in Fig. 46. In reality it consists of two, portions, the outer cup a, and an inner one, b. This latter is externally only three-eighths of an inch shorter than a, but its internal depth is three-quarters of an inch less than the external, its actual bottom being in the position indicated by the dotted line. At the point d is a small air-hole.
In use, the portion a is loaded into the hat (either separately, or by openly introducing both a and b together, and bringing out again b only). The egg, beaten up in b, is poured into the hat, or in reality into a, into which b is then lowered, after which both are brought up together, as one, the vent at d al-lowing the air to escape, and so permitting the one to be fitted closely into the other.
There is a wire edge round the mouth of the smaller cup, to facilitate the lifting out of the latter after the two together have been lowered into the hat.