Page:The American Boy's Handy Book edition 1.djvu/36

that will create an unlimited amount of fun whenever he makes his appearance in his æsthetic Kate Greenaway suit. By carefully following the construction according to the diagram (Fig. 9) the average boy will find little difficulty in building a twin brother to the kite in the illustration (Fig. 10).

Still another strange looking kite can be made by using a piece of pliable wood bent in a circular form for the body, and allowing the leg-sticks to protrude above the shoulders to form short arms, the spine extending below the trunk some distance to form the tail to a

It is not worth while to build one less than two feet high. Let us suppose that the particular batrachian we are now about to make is to be just that height; in this case the leg-sticks must be each two feet long, and as you will want to bend them at the knees, these points should be made considerably thinner than the other parts of the sticks. The spine must be about one foot seven inches long, or a little over three-quarters of the length of the leg-sticks. Place the two latter one above the other, lay the spine on top of them, and see that the tops of all three are flush, or perfectly even. Then at a point eight inches from the top, drive a pin through all three sticks, carefully clamping it upon the other side where the point protrudes. For the body, take a piece of thin rattan two feet five or six inches in length, bend it into the form of a circle, allowing the ends to overlap an inch or two that they may be firmly bound together with thread by winding it around the joint. The circle will be about eight inches in diameter. Take the three sticks you pinned together and lay them on the floor, spreading them apart in the form of an irregular star, in such a