Provide yourself with a toilet water-decanter and take care that it has a good wide mouth, the wider in fact the better. Next purchase one of those toy porcelain figures which girls sometimes dress up as miniature dolls, and see that the decanter’s mouth is big enough to admit the figure passing readily through; finally, select a walnut, also not too big for easy entrance into the bottle, and now you may set about making your ludion.
First split the walnut into halves with a knife, taking care you do not impart ragged edges to the two sides of the shell, then scoop out the nut and eat it, and having done so cement the two half-shells together—sealing-wax will do, but shellac is better, and marine glue (a compound of shellac with india-rubber) is best of all. Marine glue can be purchased of tool-makers and others, and it is to be used exactly like sealing-wax, not dissolved in water like ordinary glue. When the two sides of your walnut have cooled and set, you must bore a hole about the diameter of a pigeon’s quill at one end.
All this being done, pass a loop of fine wire lengthwise over the walnut-shell, taking care that the hole you have bored shall face downwards. From the loop you see that a straight length of wire passes downwards and is then attached to the head of the little figure. The easiest way to effect this attachment is by passing a small loop of the wire round the little man’s neck.
The smaller the wire is you use, by so much the more invisible will it be, and therefore the prettier. If you can get hold of a wire-covered fiddle or guitar string, and from it strip away a suitable length of wire, nothing can be better.
From the neck-loop a straight length of the same wire descends, as you see represented in the picture, and ends by attachment to what our artist has depicted as a leaden bullet, but a weight of any other shape would have done as well, and I should advise you to use a piece of sheet-lead as affording easier means of attachment than does a bullet.
I have said nothing yet about one little matter you will have to see to—namely, some means of steadying and preventing from slipping the loop which passes round the shell lengthwise. This may be effected by sealing-wax, shellac, or marine glue; still, perhaps, better by passing a wire loop transversely round the walnut-shell, thus covering the wire of the first loop and obliging it to lie tight to the shell without shifting.
You had best now get a good large pail of water and regulate the weight of your little man and his belongings. The success of the manufacture altogether depends upon the care and accuracy with which this is done. Immerse the whole apparatus and see what happens. If it sink to the bottom of the pail, your leaden weight is too heavy, and you must cut away a portion—not too much, however, as that would destroy the balance you want to arrive at, and which is necessary to success. No rule other than what is called ‘rule of thumb’ can be set down for your guidance; but care, thought, and attention being given, you are sure to succeed at last.
When the proper weight has been attained, take your little man and his belongings out of the pail, and lower all in the water-bottle about two-thirds full of water, in which henceforth he is to dwell and perform his little gambols. Whether he can do so or not you will soon be in a position to see. Take a piece of thin sheet india-rubber and tie it over the decanter’s mouth, like a drumhead. If, on pressing the drumhead with a finger, your little man descends, bobbing up again when you remove the pressure, by this sign you shall know that the toy is complete. If otherwise, then it is proved that your weight is not heavy enough, so out your little man must come for emendation.
Now, how are you going to correct his balance? The most obvious way of doing so would be to attach a little more weight. That device would look ugly, however, and ugliness is to be avoided in a toy. Do you not see that putting a little water into the nutshell through the hole would effect the purpose? But how to get the water in is the problem; you cannot pour water in from a jug, or even a lipped glass. It might be done by using a syringe, but a far prettier, and at the same time more instructive device, is the one I will now show you. If you are an attentive young fellow, taking note of whatever has been once told you, the little instrument will come finished from your hands in ten minutes after your first setting about making it. If you are an inattentive fellow, I do not care about having anything to do with you. The little instrument about to be described must be made by a blow-pipe operation. This done, you will see how to make a good glass tool of this shape, and about this size:—