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.
Hand Dragons
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.