A handful of bluebottle flies inserted within the bass-vial, or the greasing the fiddle-bows to make the instrument play a perpetual mute, may be numbered among them. A little lather put into a cornet will be blown out into soap-bubbles when it is played.
THEATRICAL THUNDER.
Suspend a sheet of iron, five feet wide by six or seven feet long, from the centre of one end by a cord. At the lower end, about five feet from the ground, fasten a handle. On seizing this, and shaking the sheet so that it shall wave in horizontal rolls from your hand upwards, the sound of thunder will be heard, and you will say, with Gainsborough, “Our thunder is decidedly the best.”
Another Way.—Make a square drum-head of wood, a yard long by half as much wide, over which you spread and firmly glue a sheet of parchment, rather thick, wet on being put on, so as to dry very tight. Hang this up, and, on tapping it with your fingers, the reverberation will imitate a thunder-peal closely. Thus, in the theatre, a tap on the big drum often serves for this purpose.
TO IMITATE THE CRASH OF A THUNDERBOLT STRIKING.
Fig. 109.
It may have happened to you to have been present when a servant’s awkwardness has let a Venetian blind come down by the “run,” when you surely cannot have failed to notice the terrific noise resulting. By a similar fall of slats, of which the sudden contact gives a number of sharp clatters, blended by the rapidity of their succession into one crash, the semblance of a thunderbolt’s fall is given.
A A, stout iron rods, to which is fastened, at the lower ends, a board C; they rise perpendicularly, and are fastened above, being about 10 feet in length. B B are ropes, to which, at E E, are fastened firmly the slats D D (of which but two are represented, but there are as many as will cover the whole space enclosed in the rods, set 6 or 10 inches apart). These slats slide freely up and down the rods. The ropes, when drawn up taut, retain the slats apart, but, on being released, the slats fall, each striking the under one, and all coming down on C with a fearful crash.