II
“Everyone will have noticed with what skill a coin let fall upon the ground runs to hide itself,
and what art it has in making itself invisible.”
Victor Hugo—Les Miserables.
There is no doubt that tricks with coins long antedated tricks with cards. Coins were in common use ages before cards were made available to all and sundry by the printing press. Probably the operators of the “anciente and honorable plaie of the balles”—cups and balls—soon applied to coins the peculiar processes they employed in their manipulations with balls. It is strange, however, that there is no printed record of the different passes and palms with coins earlier than the middle of the nineteenth century, when Ponsin published his book Nouvelle Magic Blanche Devoulée (1853). Fifteen years later Robert-Houdin, in his work Les Secrets de la Prestidigitation et de la Magie, gave the first complete explanation of magic with coins. In spite of this there was but little progress in the way of new principles or sleights until 1895, when T. Nelson Downs invented the back and front palm with coins, and a number of other new principles and sleights, which practically revolutionized the art of coin manipulation.
Tricks with coins are always effective and they have this great advantage— coins are always available and anyone who has acquired some skill in their manipulation can stage a little magical performance anywhere at a moment’s notice. I shall treat the basic principles first, then the new sleights and manipulations, and finally tricks in which these are put to practical use.
I. THE SECRET HOLDS
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