Page:The American Boy's Handy Book edition 1.djvu/356

make the actors, and the next chapter gives an original adaptation of an old story, prepared especially for a puppet-show.

Among the rubbish of the lumber-room, or attic, you can hardly fail to find an old frame of some kind—one formerly used for a picture or old-fashioned mirror would be just the thing. Image missingFig. 203.Wooden Frame for Puppet-Show. Should your attic contain no frames, very little skill with carpenters' tools is required to manufacture a strong wooden stretcher. It need not be ornamental, but should be neat and tidy in appearance, and about two feet long by eighteen inches high.

On the back of this tack a piece of white muslin, being careful to have it stretched perfectly tight, like a drum-head. The cloth should have no seams nor holes in it to mar the plain surface.

A simple way to support the frame in an upright position is to make a pair of "shoes," of triangular pieces of wood. If the top of each shoe a rectangular notch should be cut, deep enough to hold the frame firmly. Fig. 203 shows a wooden frame, and the manner in which the shoes should be made.

can be cut out of card-board. Very natural-looking trees may be made of sticks with bunches of pressed moss pasted upon the ends. Pressed maiden-hair fern makes splendid tropical foliage, and tissue or any other thin paper may be used for still water. Thin paper allows the light to pass partially