Chapter 15

Leaves which are to be skeletonized should be picked from the trees at the end of June. They should be perfect ones of full growth. It is best to have several of each kind, as some are sure to be failures. Put the leaves in a big earthenware dish or pan, fill it with rain-water, and stand it in a warm and sunny place--the purpose of this being to soak off the green pulpy part. There is a great difference in the time which this takes: some fine leaves will be ready in a week, while others may need several months. Look at the leaves every day, and when one seems to be ready slip a piece of cardboard under it and shake it about gently in fresh cold water. If any green stuff remains, dab it with a soft brush and then put it into another basin of clean water. A fine needle can be used to take away any small and obstinate pieces of green. It is now a skeleton and must be bleached according to the following directions:--Pour into a large earthenware jar a pint of water on half a pound of chloride of lime. Mix thoroughly, breaking up any lumps with the hand. Add two and a half quarts of water, cover over, and leave for twenty-four hours. Then pour off the solution, leaving the sediment behind. Dissolve two pounds of soda in one quart of boiling water, and pour it, while on the boil, over the chloride solution. Cover it, and leave for forty-eight hours; then decant into bottles, being careful to leave all sediment behind.

Fill an earthenware dish with this solution, lay the leaves in it, and cover tightly. The leaves will be bleached in six to twelve hours. They should be taken out directly they are white, as the lime makes them very brittle. After bleaching, rinse the leaves in cold water, float them on to cards, and dry between blotting-paper, under a heavy weight.

Ferns

It should be noted that if you intend to skeletonize ferns, they should not be picked before August, and they must be pressed and dried before they are put into the bleaching solution, in which they ought to stay for three or four days. The solution should be changed on the second day, and again on the fourth. After bleaching they can be treated just as the leaves are.

Wool Balls

Cut out two rings of cardboard, of whatever size you like, from one inch in diameter up to about four inches. A four-inch ring would make as large a ball as one usually needs, and a one-inch ring as small a one as could be conveniently made. The rim of the largest rings should not be wider than half an inch. Take a ball of wool and, placing the cardboard rings together, tie the end of it firmly round them. Then wind the wool over the rings, moving them round and round to keep it even. At first you will be able to push the ball through the rings easily, but as the wool is wound the hole will grow smaller and smaller, until you have to thread the wool through with a needle. To do this it is necessary to cut the wool into lengths, which you must be careful to join securely. Go on until the hole is completely filled and you cannot squeeze another needle through. Then slip a pair of scissors between the two rings and cut the wool all round them; and follow this up quickly by slipping a piece of string also between them and tying it tightly round the wool that is in their midst. This is to keep the loose ends, which were made directly you cut the wool with the scissors, from coming out. All that is now necessary is to pull out the cardboard rings and shape the ball a little in your hands. The tighter the wool was bound round the cards, the smaller and harder the ball will be and the more difficult will it be to cut the wool neatly and tie it. Therefore, and especially as the whole purpose of a wool ball is softness and harmlessness, it is better to wind the wool loosely and to use thick wool rather than thin.

Wool Demons

To make a "Wool Demon," take a piece of cardboard as wide as you want the demon to be tall, say three inches, and wind very evenly over it wool of the color you want the demon to be. Scarlet wool is perhaps best. Wind it about eighty times, and then remove carefully and tie a piece round about half an inch from the top to make the neck. This also secures the wool, the lower looped ends of which can now be cut. When cut, gather up about twenty pieces each side for the arms, and, holding them firmly, bind them round with other wool, and cut off neatly at the proper length. Then tie more wool round to form the body. The legs and tail are made in the same way as the arms, except that wool is wound round the legs, beginning from the feet and working upward, only to the knees, leaving a suggestion of knickerbockers. Eyes and other features can be sewn on in silk.

Bead-Work

Among other occupations which are not in need of careful description, but which ought to be mentioned, bead-work is important. It was once more popular than it now is; but beads in many beautiful colors are still made, and it is a pity that their advantages should be neglected. Bead-work lasts longer and is cleaner and brighter than any other form of embroidery. Perhaps the favorite use to which beads are now put is in the making of napkin-rings. Bead-flowers are made by threading beads on wire and bending them to the required shapes. Boxes of materials are sold in toy-shops.

Post-Office

"Post-Office" is a device for providing the family with a sure supply of letters. The first thing to do is to appoint a postmaster and fix upon the positions for the letter-boxes. You then write letters to each other and to any one in the house, and post them where you like; and at regular times the postmaster collects them and delivers them.

The Home Newspaper

In "The Home Newspaper," the first thing to do is to decide on which of you will edit it. As the editor usually has to copy all the contributions into the exercise-book, it is well that a good writer should be chosen. Then you want a good title. It is better if the contributors are given each a department, because that will make the work more simple. Each number should have a story and some poetry. Home newspapers, as a rule, come out once a month. Once a week is too often to keep up. There is a good description of one in a book by E. Nesbit, called _The Treasure-Seekers_.

Paper and Cardboard Toys--A Cocked Hat

To make a cocked hat, take a sheet of stiff paper and double it. Then fold over each of the doubled corners until they meet in the middle. The paper will then resemble Fig. 1. Then fold AB AB over the doubled corners; fold the corresponding strip of paper at the back to balance it, and the cocked hat is ready to be worn. If it is to be used in charades, it is well to pin it here and there to make it secure.

Paper Boats

If the cocked hat is held in the middle of each side and pulled out into a square, and the two sides are then bent back to make another cocked hat (but of course much smaller); and then, if this cocked hat is also pulled out into a square, it will look like Fig. 2. If the sides A and A are held between the finger and thumb and pulled out, a paper boat will be the result, as in Fig. 3.

Paper Darts

Take a sheet of stiffish paper about the size of this page and fold it longways, exactly double. Then fold the corners of one end back to the main fold, one each side. The paper sideways will then look as in Fig. 1. Then double these folded points, one each side, back to the main fold. The paper will then look as in Fig. 2. Repeat this process once more. The paper will then look as in Fig. 3. Compress the folds very tightly, and open out the top ones, so that in looking down on the dart it will have the appearance of Fig. 4. The dart is then ready for use.

Paper Mats

Take a square piece of thin paper (Fig. 1), white or colored. Fold it in half (Fig. 2), and then again in half (Fig. 3), and then again from the centre to the outside corner, when it will be shaped as in Fig. 4. If you want a round mat, cut it as marked by the dotted line in Fig. 4; if square, leave it as it is. Remember that when you cut folded paper the cuts are repeated in the whole piece as many times as there are folds in the paper. The purpose of folding is to make the cuts symmetrical. Bearing this in mind cut Fig. 4 as much as you like, as suggested by Fig. 5. Perhaps it would be well to practice first of all on a rough piece. The more delicate the cuts the prettier will be the completed mat.

Paper Boxes

Take an exactly square piece of paper (cream-laid note-paper is best in texture), and fold it across to each corner and press down the folds. Unfold it and then fold each corner exactly into the middle, and press down and unfold again. The lines of fold on the paper will now be seen to run from corner to corner, crossing in the middle, and also forming a square pattern. The next thing is to fold over each corner exactly to the line of this square on the opposite half of the paper. When this is done, and the paper is again straightened out, the lines of fold will be as in Fig. 1. Cut out the triangles marked X in Fig. 1, and the paper will be as in Fig. 2. Then cut along all the dotted lines in Fig. 2, and stand the opposite corners up to form the sides and lid of the box: first A and B, which are fastened by folding back the little flaps at the tip of A, slipping through the slit at the tip of B, and then unfolding them again; and then C and D, which are secured in the same way.

Cardboard Boxes

Cardboard boxes, of a more useful nature than paper boxes, are made on the same principle as the house described on p. 239, and the furniture to go in it, as described later in the same chapter. The whole box can be cut in the flat, out of one piece of cardboard, and the sides afterward bent up and the lid down. Measurements must of course be exact. The prettiest way to join the sides is to use thin silk instead of paper, and the lid may be made to fasten by a little bow of the same material.

Scraps and Transfers

Paper boxes, when finished, can be made more attractive by painting on them, gluing scraps to them, putting transfers here and there, or covering them with spatter-work (see p. 275). Scraps can be bought at most stationers' in a very great variety. Transfers, which are taken off by moistening in water, pressing on the paper with the slithery clouded surface downward, and being gently slipped along, used to be more common than they now are.

Directions how to make many other paper things will be found on pp. 243-262.

Ink Sea-Serpents

Dissolve a teaspoonful of salt in a glass of water, dip a pen in ink and touch the point to the water. The ink descends in strange serpent-like coils.

A Dancing Man

The accompanying picture will show how a dancing man is made to dance. You hold him between the finger and thumb, one on each side of his waist, and pull the string. The hinges for the arms and legs, which are made of cardboard, can be made of bent pins or little pieces of string knotted on each side.

Velvet Animals

The fashioning of people and animals from scraps of velvet glued on cardboard was a pleasant occupation which interested our great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers when they were children many years ago. A favorite picture was of a boy and a St. Bernard, in which the boy's head, hands, collar, and pantaloons, and the dog, were made of white velvet painted. The boy's tunic was black velvet, and its belt a strip of red paper. The dog's eye was a black pin-head. The whole was mounted on a wooden stand with wooden supports at the back, one running up to the boy's head and the other to the tip of the dog's tail. With some scraps of white and black velvet, and a little patience and ingenuity, one could make all the animals on a farm and many in the Zoo.

Hand Dragons

All the apparatus needed for a "Hand Dragon" consists of a little cardboard thimble or finger-stall, on which the features of a dragon have been drawn in pen and ink or color. This is then slipped over the top of the middle finger, so that the hand becomes its body and the other fingers and thumb its legs. With the exercise of very little ingenuity in the movement of the fingers, the dragon can be made to seem very much alive. The accompanying picture should explain everything.

Various games can be played with the fingers. Tiny caps and hats can be made, features drawn with ink on the fingers and little tissue paper dresses made. A whole play can be acted or sung by these tiny finger marionettes.

Other Uses for Cardboard

Once you have begun to make things out of cardboard, you will find no end to its possibilities and should be in no more need of any hints. After building, furnishing, and peopling a dolls' house, a farm or a menagerie would be an interesting enterprise to start upon. E. M. R. has a stud of ninety-two horses, each named, and each provided with a horse-cloth, a groom, and harness. She has also several regiments of soldiers and a staff of nurses, all cut from cardboard and painted. She chooses her horses from _Country Life_, or some such paper, and copies them. Another enthusiast has a cardboard theatre in which plays and pantomimes are performed.

It might be added that cardboard figures can be made to stand up either by leaving a strip of cardboard at the bottom, in which teeth can be cut and bent alternately one way or the other, or by slipping the feet into grooves cut in little blocks of wood.

Cardboard Cut-Outs

There are a great many cut-outs issued nowadays, which may be bought for a small sum at any toy shop. Perhaps the best among these are "The Mirthful Menagerie," "The Agile Acrobats" and "The Magic Changelings." "The Mirthful Menagerie" when properly cut out and pasted together, make a lot of animals that have _thickness_ as well as length and height; "The Agile Acrobats" can be made to assume almost any position, and in "The Magic Changelings," Little Red Riding Hood, for instance, can be changed into the wolf, and then back again!

Books of cut-outs are also made, in which the books are intact after the cut-outs have been removed. "The New Mother Goose" gives illustrations of many of the Mother Goose rhymes to be cut out and pasted together, and has a story and other pictures besides. "The Electric Fire Fighters" is on the same order, only in this case the pictures to be put together are of the Electric Fire-Engine, the Electric Water-Tower, etc. They are all easily made, and are fascinating games for stormy weather, or for indoor games at any time.

Particulars of "Snap" cards and other home-made cards will be found on pp. 77 and 78.

Kites

In China, and to some extent in Holland, kite-flying is not the pastime only of boys, but of grave men. And certainly grave men might do many more foolish things. To feel a kite pulling at your hands, to let out string and see it climb higher and higher and higher into the sky--this is a real joy. For good kite-flying you want plenty of room and a steady wind; hence a big field is the best place, unless you are at the seaside when there is a wind off the land, in which case you can fly your kite from the beach. To make an ordinary, serviceable kite, take two laths (which can be bought for a penny from any builder), one three feet long (AA in the picture) and the other two feet (BB). Screw BB with two screws exactly in the middle, at right angles to AA, at C, a foot from the top. Then take some stout twine of good quality and make the outline of the kite by tying it securely to the ends of each of the laths. Next take the thinnest unbleached calico you can find, stretch it fairly tightly, and sew it over the strings. (Or strong but light paper will do, pasted over the string.) Make a hole (D) through the upright lath and calico, midway between the cross-piece and the top, and another hole (E) about fifteen inches below the cross-piece, and tie a strong string, two and a half feet long, to these holes, with a loop (F) in it a foot from the top hole. To this loop you will tie the string of the kite. The tail (G) is made of pieces of paper about six inches long, rolled tightly and tied at distances of a foot. Its exact length will depend on the strength of the wind and can be determined only by experience, but, roughly speaking, it should be five times the height of the kite, or, with the kite which we are making, fifteen feet long. It is best to have the tail in two or three pieces, and then it can be lengthened or shortened at will. For instance, if the kite plunges in the air and will not keep steady, the tail is not long enough; but if it will go up only a little way, the tail is probably too long. Be sure to have plenty of string, carefully wound, so that there will be no hitches in paying it out. When starting a kite you need the help of some one who will stand about thirty yards away, holding the kite against the wind, and throw it straight up when you have the line tight and give the signal. If it does not rise it may be well for you to run a few yards against the wind. At first you must not pay out line very rapidly, but when the kite is flying steadily you may give it, also steadily, all the string it wants.

Kite Messengers

A messenger is a piece of cardboard or paper with a good-sized hole in it, which you slip over the string when the kite is steady, and which is carried right up to the kite by the wind.

A Simple Toy Boat

The following directions, with exact measurements, apply to one of the simplest home-made sailing-boats. Take a piece of soft straight-grained pine, which any carpenter or builder will let you have, one foot long, four inches wide, and two inches deep. On the top of the four-inch side draw an outline as in Fig. 1, in which you will be helped by first dividing the wood by the pencil line AB, exactly in the middle. Then turn the block over and divide the under four-inch side with a similar line, and placing the saw an eighth of an inch each side of this line, cut two incisions right along the wood about a quarter of an inch deep. The portion between these two incisions forms the keel. Then carry the line up the middle of the end A, and repeat the incisions as along the bottom, these making the boat's stem-post. Next turn to the top again, and make a line, similar to the dotted line CC in Fig. 1, about three-eighths of an inch inside the outline of the boat, and then carefully hollow out with a gouge everything inside this dotted line. It must be very carefully done; it is better, indeed, to err on the side of not hollowing her out enough, and then a little more can be removed afterward. Next shape the outside, first with a saw and then with a chisel, again using the utmost care. Try to give her a fine bow, or "entry," and a good clean stern, or "run." If the boat were cut in two crossways in the middle, the section ought to resemble that in Fig. 2. This flat "floor" will be graduated away to nothing at bow and stern. Next fix on the lead keel (see K in Fig. 3), which should be a quarter of an inch thick, a quarter of an inch deep at the bow, and three-quarters at the stern, fastened on with four long thin screws. Next make the deck, which should not be more than an eighth of an inch thick and should fit very closely at the edges.

The mast (C), which should be about three-eighths of an inch in diameter at the foot, and should taper slightly, must stand one foot above the deck, and pass through the deck four and a half inches from the bow. First pass it through the hole in the deck and place it in position, leaning a little back from the bows; then slip up the deck and mark the place in the bottom of the boat where the mast rests, and there fix, with four small brass screws, a block of wood with a hole in it, into which the mast can be firmly "stepped." Then on the upper side of the deck, just in front of the mast-hole, screw a small eyelet. This is to hold the line called the foresail sheet (L), but as the deck is only an eighth of an inch thick you must place a little block of wood under the deck, into which the eyelet can be screwed. Directly this is done, the deck is ready to be screwed firmly to the boat with brass screws. If you are in any doubt as to its being water-tight, you had better bore a hole in it and put a cork in, so that you can tip it up and empty it after each voyage.

The bowsprit (J), a quarter of an inch in diameter, should be three and a half inches long, two inches of which project beyond the bow. Screw it firmly to the boat. You have now to shape the boom (F) and gaff (D), which must have a fork at the end, as in Fig. 4, to embrace the mast, the ends of this fork being joined by string. The boom should be eight and a half inches long and three-eighths of an inch in diameter, and the gaff five inches long and a quarter of an inch in diameter. The gaff is kept in position, about three inches from the mast-head, by the throat halyards and peak halyards, to which we now come. The peak halyards (H), throat halyards (G), and foresail halyards (F) should be of very fine fishing-line. After being tied respectively to the gaff and foresail, they pass through small holes in the mast, down to eyelets screwed into the bulwarks on each side of the mast.

The foresail sheet (L) and main sheet (M), which are some four inches long, are hitched to eyelets screwed into the deck amidships, one just in front of the mast, as already explained, and the other about two inches from the stern. The sails must be of thin calico, neatly hemmed round. Both sails should come to about three inches of the head of the mast. The foresail is fastened only to the tip of the bowsprit, the foresail halyards, and foresail sheet; the mainsail to the gaff, all along, and to each end of the boom.

Nothing has been said about a rudder, because a boat built and rigged in the manner described would balance herself, and so keep on any course on which she was laid. With a very little wind she ought to cross and recross a pond without any hitch, all that will be necessary being to let the sails have plenty of play, by loosening the foresail sheet and main sheet, and to give her a steady push.

Walnut Shell Boats

To make a boat from a walnut shell, you scoop out the half shell and cut a piece of cardboard of a size to cover the top. Through the middle of this piece of cardboard you thrust a match, and then, dropping a little sealing-wax into the bottom of the shell, and putting some round the edge, you fix the match and the cardboard to it. A sail is made by cutting out a square of paper and fastening it to the match by means of two holes; but the boat will swim much better without it.

Walnut Fights

Here it might be remarked that capital contests can be had with the empty halves of walnut shells. A plate is turned upside down, and the two fighters place their walnuts point to point is the middle. At the given word they begin to push, one against the other, by steady pressure of finger and thumb on the stern of the shell. The battle is over when the prow of one shell crashes through the prow of the other. This always happens sooner or later, but sometimes the battles are long and severe. At the end of each contest the number of shells defeated by the victor should be marked on it, and it should be carefully kept for the next conflict. At school we used to have tremendous excitement when two champions met, a walnut with a record of 520, for instance, and another with 700. The winner in such a battle as this would, of course, be numbered 1,221, because you always add not only your defeated adversary to your score, but all his victims too.

Suckers