Tricks with Handkerchiefs

As an accessory, the handkerchief has always been popular with conjurors. If anything had to be covered over, or wrapped up, during some process of transformation, a borrowed handkerchief was just the thing for the purpose, and one white handkerchief was so very like another that an article so enveloped was `changed' with special facility. But until Buatier de Kolta showed the way, no one seems to have appreciated the intrinsic capabilities of the silk handkerchief as a magical `property', and once the hint was given, others were not slow to make use of it, and handkerchief tricks, in one shape of another, now form a part of almost every magical performance...