2. USING A PAPER CONE
Effect. Here again real flowers are produced but by a different method.
Preparation. Arrange a quantity of flowers into neat button-hole bouquets with your tags attached. Take some fifteen of these, press them together into a tight bundle, wrap them round with a piece of black tissue paper, tie the bundle crosswise with black thread (not too strong for it must be broken later on), and leave a loop of about eight inches in length projecting from one side.
Make a large cone with a piece of white tissue paper; out off the top level and pack the rest of the flowers into it, filling it to the brim. Tie a thread around the top about an inch from the edge, leaving a loop by means of which you can hang it on a short, stout needle driven into the back of a chair. Between the point of the cone and the back of the chair fix a piece of thin black wire about three inches long. If the chair is not one with a solid back, arrange a silk foulard to conceal the cone. Place a small basket on the table, and off stage have a piece of stiff white paper about eighteen by twenty-four inches.
Method. When you are ready to show the trick, place the bundle of flowers under your left arm, the thread loop to the front; bend the arm against your chest and slip your left thumb through the loop. Take the sheet of paper in the same hand and the wand in the right hand. Go to your table, lay the wand down, and pick up the basket with the right hand. Announce that you are about to use the basket, show it empty, and put it on the seat of the chair. Show the sheet of paper; twirl it round between your hands, showing both sides. Take the upper edge in the left hand, the thumb behind and fingers in front; move the hand forwards a little and release the bundle, letting it drop behind the paper (Fig. 3). With the right hand seize the lower right corner; twist it up over the bundle and make a cone, at the same time letting the loop slip off the left thumb and twisting the corner of the cone tightly with that hand. Place the right hand inside, apparently to straighten it out but really to break the thread and crumple up the black tissue, and release the flowers.
Hold the cone up in your left hand and, in time with appropriate music, make motions of catching flowers in the air and throwing them into the cone; at each catch look at the imaginary flower and name it, using the names of those in the cone. Keep shaking the cone to bring the flowers nearer the top and to separate them. When you have made some eight or ten catches, gracefully and realistically, approach the chair and turn the mouth of the cone toward the spectators.
Take the nosegays out, one at a time, and drop them into the basket, contriving to drop several accidentally on the floor. Bring out the black tissue, squeezed into a little ball, with the last flower. Take the cone in the right hand, stoop down to pick up the flowers off the floor, and under cover of the body bring the mouth of the cone just under the point of the flower-filled cone behind the chair. In the act of rising, pick up the basket from the seat of the chair and carry off the cone and loop of thread from the needle (Fig. 4).
Walk forwards as if about to distribute the flowers from the basket, on which you have kept your whole attention; then pretend to realize that more will be required. Put the basket on the table, repeat the catches, and finally show the cone full to overflowing. Empty these flowers into the basket, and in taking out the last squeeze the tissue paper into a ball and drop it into the basket.
Open out the paper, show it, and proceed with the distribution.
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