11.—LIGHTS AND SHADES.
If you wish to throw the background of a tableau into shadow, place screens between the lights at the sides of the stage and that part of the picture you wish to have dark; vice versa with the foreground. Particular points or characters may be more brilliantly lighted than others, by placing at the side of the stage a strong light within a large box, open at one side, and lined with bright tin reflectors.
Lights of different colors can be thrown successively on a picture, and made to blend one with another, by placing the various colored fires in boxes three feet square, one at one side, and lined with reflectors. Those arranged at the sides of the stage on pivots, can be turned on, one after another, so as to throw their light on the stage. Before one light has entirely vanished from the scene, a different color should gradually take its place.
Ventriloquism Made Easy.
Ventriloquism we always supposed, like many other arts, depended to a certain extent on natural talent, or was a peculiar gift.
Professional ventriloquists favor the idea that it is a natural gift, in order to enhance their profits. But boys of the present age are not so ready to believe in marvellous gifts, and may have persevered in trying to imitate famous ventriloquists, and to try was to succeed.
A friend of ours once met a boy only ten or eleven years old, who was an excellent ventriloquist, so far as the power of throwing the voice into a closet or adjoining room goes. On being questioned if he could explain the power he had, the boy said he had heard Harrington the ventriloquist some time previous, and having a desire to possess the same acquirement, he passed in practice in a garret all the spare time he could get for many days, and at the end of that time was fairly startled himself at hearing a voice come distinctly from an old chest of drawers.
The persevering little fellow had found out for himself the true theory.
We will give our young friends some plain and simple rules and directions how to acquire the power of ventriloquism, which we have obtained from a reliable English work; many persons following these rules have obtained proficiency in this art, according as they devoted time and attention to the subject. The word ventriloquism is derived from venter, the belly, and loquor, I speak; literally signifying, belly-speaking.