THE WITCHES’ DANCE.
Draw a figure of a witch riding on a broomstick, or a capering demon, on a sheet of cardboard, and cut it clean out.
Make a square aperture in a partition facing a transparent screen, large enough to comprise the figure, say twelve inches, and place the cut-out board in it, tight as a pane of glass in its frame.
Let the part of the room where the audience sit be darkened, and the only light pass through the hole in the partition, or rather through the cut-out cardboard.
If but one light is held to the figure, the counterpart, enlarged according to the distance between the screen and the picture, will be single, but, on having three or more candles, the figures will be trebled or quadrupled, and the effect will be startling and whimsical.
The limbs of such figures can be fashioned of wire, and the result is highly amusing when a score of such figures are to be seen capering. The jaws can move as if masticating, the arms may brandish a club, a somersault may be executed, and so on. A ratchet and cogged wheel action will make the movement backward and forward regular and fully controllable.
The screen should be of cambric muslin, strained tightly, and soaked with a varnish composed of picked gum-arabic and white starch, which renders it diaphanous.