he first exposition of the principles of card magic was published in 1769 by the French writer Guyot, and he it was who first laid down the dictum that mastery of the pass is the first requisite of the art of conjuring with cards. His actual words were: "Before risking an attempt at these kinds of Recreations, you must know how to make the pass."
All succeeding French writers on the subject followed his lead and insisted that the pass is the first essential. Professor Hoffmann, whose book Modem Magic, published in 1876, was the first scientific treatise on magic in the English language, took most of his material from the French authors and followed their example in this respect. He described the pass as "the very backbone of card conjuring," and for years this statement was accepted as gospel by all our other writers, who reiterated without exception that, "without the pass, card magic is impossible."
The pass is a very difficult sleight to master, and this insistence on its indispensability makes it easy to understand why the would-be card conjurers of the last century, after a prolonged and vain struggle with the intricacies of this sleight, finally decided that conjuring with cards was not for them and turned to some easier hobby.
After all, the principal use of the pass is to bring a chosen card from the middle of the pack to the top, or vice versa; but it was not until the turn of the century that card conjurers freed themselves of this inhibition and devised easier methods of attaining the same objective.
We have shown in the preceding pages that the pass is not
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