BALBOA DISCOVERING THE PACIFIC OCEAN.
Place a pan of water on the floor in plain sight of the audience; then let someone dress up in a long cloak and high-crowned hat to personate Balboa, and stand on a table in the middle of the floor, while the rest of the performers, enveloped in shawls, crouch around. When the curtain is drawn aside, Balboa must be seen looking intently through one end of a tin horn, or one made of paper, at the pan of water.
NERO AT THE BURNING OF ROME.
Nero, in brilliant robes made of shawls, sits on a table, surrounded by his courtiers, who are also in fantastic costumes. Nero is in the act of fiddling, his fiddle being a small fire shovel, and the bow a poker. On the floor in front of the group is placed a large shallow pan or tray, in which is set a small house, which has been hastily cut from paper. A lighted match is put to the paper house just as the curtains are parted.
These two suggestions will no doubt be sufficient to show what the tableaux should be like and we need give no further illustrations.
Living Christmas Cards.
Fig. 248.—Manner of Holding Card.
To impart seeming life to the little figures painted on the Christmas cards, is a performance intensely amusing to the little ones. A moving toy whose actions are life-like is always of great interest; but when a little flesh-and-blood head is seen nodding and twisting upon the shoulders of a figure painted on a card, the children fairly shout with delight.
Here is the method of bringing life into the bits of pasteboard.