GREAT SHOW
AND FEED
At two o’clock
Admission One Cent.
I pay my fee at the door of one of the children’s chambers, and am asked by the youthful ticket-seller if I care for a reserved seat. In a stage whisper he adds, ‘O Parp, do take one; if you don’t, we’ll come out short on the refreshments.’ I deposit the additional penny, and am ushered to a seat upon the bed, over which is the placard, ‘First Balcony.’ The rabble is seated on chairs.
“We are handed programs, executed with the expenditure of much muscle and saliva. First, according to this program, is a ‘P’rad of Ginruls,’ introducing the entire company. Then follow recitations, songs, shadow pictures, stereopticon and original plays, one of border life and the other of conflict with crime in the city. A reminiscence of Cooper is traceable in these vigorously acted dramas. The manipulation of apparatus and the movements and dialogue behind the scenes are as entertaining to the spectators as the regular acts. At the close a plate of delicious plums is passed, for which the youngsters must have walked two miles in the hot sun, and mortgaged all of the proceeds of the entertainment in advance.”
The superior craftsmanship of the child between ten and twelve enables him to enjoy games which imitate in close detail many adult activities. Crepe paper, beads, and such plastic materials as clay and plasticine can be used for improving the beauty of constructive articles. The boy now enjoys some of the published games by which he can play conductor, postoffice, and banker, and the girl who plays house does some actual cooking and house-cleaning.
There was a description not long ago in American Motherhood of the way a family carried their dramatic representations of literature still further. They made models of the places they read about. An Esquimau village was the simplest task. The people, dogs, sledges, and seals can be modeled in clay and colored if material is at hand. If not, they can be made of paper. Some oiled paper over blue makes a beautiful polar sea, in which should float a great iceberg built either from paper, or modeled from clay and covered with cotton, over which clambers a polar bear. Cotton should cover the rude huts and all the land with its snowy whiteness, and if a few pennies are available, a sprinkling of diamond dust makes the scene very realistic.
The guidance of an older person is desirable in the matter of reading, for the children should be encouraged to see that every detail is true to fact. If Robinson Crusoe’s Island is attempted and rightly carried out, the family copy will be worn to tatters before it is done, as it certainly should be. The same kind of oiled and blue paper will again serve for the ocean; the sandy beach can be real sand, in which may be planted the tropical forest. The text itself must be studied for the location of the cave, the later huts, the boat, the animals and birds. In fact, the story must be made the foundation of it all and its directions followed to the minutest detail.
The Hiawatha story is used in some form or other by almost every primary teacher, and the working out of Hiawatha’s home is unfailingly interesting. Here clay or plasticine is especially desirable. All the characters mentioned in the poem are modeled in it and colored to barbaric splendor. Wigwams are set in the evergreen forest, canoes line the stony beach of the shining lake, while birds, squirrels, turtles and other creatures are fitted into their proper environment. Old Nakomis sits at the tent door; the fortune teller is in evidence; Hiawatha stands at his canoe, and all the other characters are employed as the story directs. The study for it and the making of Hiawatha’s home should offer occupation for a large part of a winter’s leisure.
The beginnings of American history are studied through the reproduction of a street in the Dutch village in which the Puritans took refuge from persecution in England. Its houses with red roofs, its wind-mills, its church, reproduce the character of the place, while in the street are groups of people clad in the costume of the times, the men with the broad-brimmed hats, the women with close bonnets.
The next step carries the Pilgrims across the water to the building of Old Plymouth. In the construction of this village small twigs can be used for the making of real log houses. Here, of course, must appear the homes of Priscilla, of John Alden and Miles Standish, the Common House and other places which any simple story of the Pilgrim Fathers will give. Someone must hunt in the yard or in the street for a real Plymouth Rock to place upon the seashore.
If possible, it is well to have two or three children work together if a village is attempted. The work then moves rapidly enough to escape discouragement, and the many discussions that are bound to arise over the right way of doing this or that are bound to be instructive.