The Numerical Cards
Let the long card be the sixteenth in the pack of piquet cards. Take
ten or twelve cards from the top of the pack, and, spreading them on
the table, desire a person to think on any one of them, and to observe
the number it is from the first card. Make the pass at the long card,
which will then be at the bottom. Then ask the party the number his
card was at, and, counting to yourself from that number to sixteen,
turn the cards up, one by one, from the bottom. Then stop at the
seventeenth card, and ask the person if he has seen his card, when he
will say no. You then ask him how many more cards you shall draw
before his card appears; and when he has named the number, you draw
the card aside with your finger, turn up the number of cards he
proposed, and throw down the card he fixed on.