Page:The American Boy's Handy Book edition 1.djvu/355

The puppet-show is certainly an old institution; and, for aught I know, the shadow-pantomime may be equally ancient. But the puppet-show here described originated, so far as I am aware, within our family circle, having gradually evolved itself from a simple sheet of paper hung on the back of a chair, with a light placed on the seat of the chair behind the paper.

The puppets (not the most graceful and artistic) originally were impaled upon broom-straws, and by this means their shadows were made to jump and dance around in the most lively manner, to the intense delight of a juvenile audience. As these juveniles advanced in years and knowledge, they developed a certain facility with pencil and scissors; the rudimentary paper animals and fairies gradually assumed more possible forms; the chair-back was replaced by a wooden soap or candle-box with the bottom knocked out; and the sheet of paper gave way to a piece of white muslin. Thus, step by step, grew up the puppet-show, from which so much pleasure and amusement have been derived by the writer and his young friends that he now considers it not only a pleasure, but his duty, to tell his readers how to make one like it for themselves.

The construction of properties and actors, and the manipulation of the puppets at an exhibition, are by no means the least of the fun. To start the readers fairly in their career of stage-managers, this chapter tells how to build the theatre,