with your "opposite end" before his attention comes back to you. To get the Art of Misdirection clearly into your mind, I want you to practice this little move: Stand before your mirror and watch yourself.

Take a coin in your left hand. You are going to get the effect of passing it to your right hand. For a few times really pass the coin from your left to your right hand. This is to give you Naturalness in faking the pass and also to give you an opportunity to observe how your eyes go from your left to your right hand. After you have done this a few times, go through the same moves but retain the coin by finger palming it in your left hand. Close your right hand as if you had the coin. Your eyes must follow the pretended passing of the coin just as they did when you actually passed it. Your audience will follow your eyes to your right hand and will not even notice your left hand.

It is unbelievable until you try it yourself how easily large objects — even a rabbit — can be moved about almost under the very noses of the audience without their seeing or suspecting anything if you know the Art of Misdirection.

Nearly the whole art of Sleight of Hand depends on this Art of Misdirection. Your seemingly miraculous effects depend on speed and cleverness in directing the attention of the audience away from the opposite end of the effect -- away from what you are really doing. You will find this intensely interesting when we begin to study Sleight of Hand. In training you to be a Magician, I am training you to be so well equipped with the principles of Magic and effects that you can vary your tricks to fit any occasion and to be ready to meet any emergencies when you are performing.

I give you variations of tricks based on the same principle. Sometimes it may be necessary to repeat a trick within a short period of time and some of the old audience may be in the new one. You can throw these spectators off the track by presenting the trick by a different method of working. You can add some little twist to the trick, and even those who see it for the second time will not discover how you do the trick. There are "close investigators" in some audiences. You will have no difficulty in mystifying them if you vary your effects, even just a trifle. I give you also similar effects based on different principles. A magician often fools another magician with just this style of working. He will introduce a new twist of some kind or a new method of working and he has his fellow magician puzzled.
Harlan Tarbell was the mentor of many gnerations of magicians through his famous correspondance course The Original Tarbell Course In Magic