This amusing toy consists of an empty spool with two pins driven into its head, as seen in the figure. With a pair of pliers break off the heads of the pins before driving them in position, then take a piece of soft wood and make a spindle, like that represented in the figure at A, and drive another headless pin into the small end. Lastly, cut from a piece of cardboard a figure like the one marked B, making three holes, a a a, with the point of a darning-needle, corresponding to the two pins in the spool and the one in the spindle.
Bend the edges marked x and y in opposite directions.
Now place the spool on the spindle and wind a piece of twine around the spool; then place the piece of pasteboard upon the top, letting the pins pass up through the row of holes in its center.
Holding the machine upright in the left hand, with a quick movement of the right, jerk the string from the spool, and the cardboard will fly through the air with a very graceful motion.
If stripes of color are added to the ends, as seen in the cut, a much prettier effect is produced while the whirligig is in operation. These stripes can be painted in red, white, and blue water colors, or may be formed by pasting on narrow strips of bright-colored paper.
If the first trial does not succeed, wind the string in the other direction, or put on the “card flyer,” with the other side next the spool. The same causes which make it soar away in the one case will hold it yet more firmly to the spool in the other.
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HOW TO MAKE A BOOK.
Do any of my boy readers know how to make a book? Not the fine volumes turned out by the thousand in our great publishing houses, but the little individual books made by boys and girls, and needing for their construction only an old used-up ledger, a small tin pan of paste, and scraps cut from newspapers or books. These bits may consist simply of poems, or they may be “a little of all sorts.”
I recently saw a very nice book of this kind made by a boy of twelve, which was composed entirely of humorous pictures and jokes, culled from several illustrated and daily papers, one or two almanacs, and various other chance publications, which he had collected during the year. Whenever he found any bright or witty thing, he would carefully preserve the clipping by putting it in a large paper box he kept in a convenient place for that purpose.