_The Motion Picture Fun that the Crow Knew_
SURE enough, there was a crow letter in the mail-box next morning! It
was written on the same wee note paper with a real crow stamp that was
drawn in pencil in the upper right-hand corner. Jimsi brought it to
breakfast with her and read it aloud—exactly as if Aunt Phoebe didn’t
know what was in it already! You know, _that_ was the crow play always!
This was the letter:
“DEAR JIMSI:
To-day, I want you to do something for _me_. You see
I do quite a bit for _you_. I like to make you happy,
you know, and tell you of jolly things to play. What I
want you to do for _me_ is to tell a little lame girl
about your paper doll play and the toy furniture that
my Magic Book made.
The little lame girl cannot go out-doors as you can.
She has to stay in a wheel-chair and the hours are very
long for her. I would like to have you help her. You
can help her much better than I can because _you_ are
a little girl and I am only a play crow.
Good-bye,
_Caw Caw._
P. S.
Her name is Joyce. She lives in the third house from
the corner.”
“Oh, I’d love to go!” declared Jimsi. “When can I go?”
“As soon as we’ve had our walk,” Aunt Phoebe answered. “Maybe you’d
like to do something else for Joyce and the Good Crow—would you?”
Jimsi nodded. “I’d love to!”
“Well, when we go to town, we’ll buy Joyce some crayons like yours and
a bottle of five-cent library paste. You shall take them to her to work
with and you can tell her the crow sent them.”
“Splendid!”
So they went to market and Jimsi bought the crayons in the ten cent
store. She insisted on paying for them herself because she said that
this time it was going to be _her_ crow. Then, when they reached home,
Jimsi wrote a crow letter to the little lame girl, Joyce, and did
the crayons up with the five cent bottle of paste that Aunt Phoebe
insisted was _her_ crow.
With a box full of paper doll envelopes and toy furniture, and Jimsi’s
own crayons and scissors from The Happy Shop, the Magic Book rolled up
to make a big package to carry under one arm, Jimsi ran over to the
third brown house from the corner and rang the bell. It was rather a
dingy little house. It did not look pretty. It looked poor and sad.
But when the door opened, it opened on the most cheerful room you can
imagine. It was Joyce’s mother who opened it. She wore a big white
apron as if she were busy working and she beamed down at Jimsi standing
on the steps with her arms so full of the Magic Book and the box of
paper dolls that she could hardly hold them.
“I came because the Good Crow wrote me a letter about Joyce,” stated
Jimsi. “The Good Crow said she’d like to know about my paper dolls so
she could play at making dresses too. So I came.”
“Oh, come right in, little girl,” invited Joyce’s mother. “Yes. The
crow sent Joyce a letter yesterday to say that his friend, Jimsi, was
coming over with a magic book. We’re very glad you came, aren’t we,
Joyce?”
Jimsi hadn’t seen Joyce but now she looked toward the window and saw
a wheel-chair with a beautiful dark-haired girl of twelve propped up
in it and holding out a welcoming hand. “I’m ever so glad you came,”
she laughed. “Don’t you love the Good Crow? I do. Miss Phoebe’s ever
so lovely, I think. She’s every day thinking up something nice for me
to do, almost. There’s sure to be a crow letter full of fun whenever I
need it most.”
“Yes,” declared Joyce’s mother. “I don’t know what I’d do, if it
weren’t for the Good Crow who belongs to Miss Phoebe. There’s only one
thing Joyce wants do do when she isn’t reading. It’s checkers! I’ve
played more games of checkers than you can shake a stick at, Jimsi! But
when the crow letters come with new suggestions for things to do—why,
you know, Joyce doesn’t want to read or even play checkers! The Good
Crow’s play is best of all. Tell Jimsi about the motion picture play,
darling!”
Motion picture play! Why the very idea of it! Goodness, how
interesting! Do you know anything that is nicer than motion pictures!
At once Jimsi was wide awake and eager. “Oh, I want to know about the
motion picture play!” she exclaimed. “Oh, _please_ do tell me! Was it
really true moving pictures?”
“Yes,” asserted Joyce, “they were real, weren’t they, Mother? But the
pictures weren’t photographs at all. You wait and I’ll show you my
motion picture screen and my whole outfit! Mother, will you get them
for me, please?—You see, Jimsi, it was in the fall when the crow told
me about these pictures. In summer I can go outdoors and once Daddy
wheeled me into town and they let me see the motion pictures. (I can’t
go often because it is such a long ride for me.) Well, I could think of
nothing else afterwards but how much I wanted to go again! You know how
it is.”
Jimsi wagged her head hard, “yes.” She didn’t want to interrupt the
story.
“One day when Miss Phoebe was over here, I told her about how I wanted
to go to motion pictures again and Miss Phoebe said she’d see what the
crow could do about it— You know how Miss Phoebe makes believe always!”
Again Jimsi nodded. “I love to make believe the way auntie does,” she
beamed. “Please tell me what happened _next_.”
“Well, next, of course, came a crow letter. I found it in a bunch of
flowers Miss Phoebe sent over.” (Joyce was trying to cover up the
things that her mother had laid in her lap. Jimsi’s eyes had been busy
with the details. There looked as if paper dolls were there.)
“You mustn’t peep,” admonished Joyce. “It won’t be a surprise if you
see. It _was_ a surprise for me! _I_ didn’t know that one could really
make motion picture fun right at home—not till Miss Phoebe’s crow wrote
me a play letter about it.”
“Well, I can’t see how you do it!”
“You can do it with the papers in the _Magic Book_,” declared Joyce.
“Oh, have you a magic book too!”
They both laughed. What fun!
“I wonder if yours is like mine?” questioned Jimsi. “I didn’t know you
had a Magic Book too, so I brought mine along with me! I was going
to tell you about how to make paper dolls and toy furniture from the
papers in my Magic Book!”
“Oh, I’d love to know how,” beamed Joyce. “I think paper dolls are
just the nicest play—almost. You must show me about them. I don’t
know how to make them. The crow never told _me_. But he did tell me
about the motion pictures and I made _this_—” she held up for Jimsi’s
examination now a picture frame that was about twelve inches long and
eight inches wide. At the back of the frame where the glass had been,
there was stretched some heavy white cloth-cotton cloth. Back of this,
where one would place the picture, if one were framing one, was the
glass that fitted the picture frame.
[Illustration: THE MOTION PICTURES THAT WERE CUT FROM WALL PAPER]
Joyce turned the frame over. “You see,” she explained, “when I hold it
front-face, it looks exactly as a motion picture screen does, doesn’t
it?—That’s before the picture play begins!”
Yes, it was true. The frame looked like the frame of a motion picture
screen.
“The difference is,” went on Joyce, “that the crow’s motion pictures
aren’t photographs. They’re really shadow pictures. One cuts
silhouettes out of heavy wall paper that is in the Magic Book—oh,
everything—and then one puts the chairs or tables, or cupboards next to
the glass to make the screen. (I always have a little _paper_ curtain
that I put before my frame while I arrange this. It is like the big
curtain in the theatre because it shuts off the picture screen.) When I
have arranged the furniture and am ready to make the actors walk about
in the room, I take the paper away so the audience can see.”
“How splendid!” sighed Jimsi, delightedly. “I think Henry’d be quite
crazy about this sort of thing. He’s my brother, you know. _He’s_ a
boy, so he thinks paper dolls are girls’ things and he won’t play with
them. Do you use paper dolls? I should think that it would be hard to
make them move about behind the furniture. I should think it would show
that somebody was moving them.”
“It doesn’t though— You’ll see!” Here the little lame girl took the
frame. “Don’t look,” she admonished with a raised forefinger. “Pretend
you’re interested in the cat!”
Indeed, Jimsi hadn’t noticed the cat before. But now she ran over to
the big open fireplace where pussy was purring before the wood fire.
Joyce’s mother was sewing on a machine. She seemed very busy indeed.
Jimsi waited for her new friend to give the word. She stroked the
comfortable tabby and thought how wonderful it was that a sick girl
who couldn’t go about except in a wheel-chair could be so cheerful and
so happy. “I hope if I’m ever sick like that that I won’t be a whiney
person,” she thought. “It’s splendid to be happy and glad when things
are like that and you know you aren’t going to be able to run about and
play—ever. Oh, I like the crow’s little lame girl wonderfully!” And it
did seem strange that the little lame girl was telling Jimsi about
_her_ play even before Jimsi had told the little lame girl about hers!
But right here, Joyce sang out, “Ready!” so Jimsi forgot the pussy cat
instantly and sprang to her feet.
“I put the frame on a table when I have a real motion picture
performance,” Joyce explained. “But you can see in the daylight better
if I hold the frame in the sunlight. Look!”
Sure enough! There was the furniture in a small room: table, chair,
cupboard! They were outlined in shadow.
“One ought to have motion pictures in the dark,” Joyce laughed. “I used
to play that way last fall. I lit a candle in the dark and placed the
candle behind my frame on the table. Then I moved the actors about so—”
Jimsi watched. Joyce had a paper doll-like actor cut in outline. To
the back of this was pasted a strip of heavy paper. As she moved the
doll across the back of the motion picture screen, holding it by the
long strip of cardboard, one could only see the figure move across the
little room. One did not see the hand that moved it or the strip of
cardboard by which it was held.
Jolly! I should say so! Why, that was exactly the best fun Jimsi had
ever seen!
“Hurrah for the crow!” she chuckled. “Why, I think _that’s_ better than
paper dolls—_almost_!”
“I’ll show you some more,” the little lame girl volunteered. “You just
wait.”
Again she changed the things that lay beside the white cloth and the
glass. When Jimsi looked, she saw that now there was out-door scenery:
bushes, trees, a fence. Why, it might have been a street in a little
town!
“I’ll show you something else!”
This time, the “something” was an automobile.
As Joyce held the frame in the clear sunlight, its shadow on the screen
was plain. As Jimsi watched, the automobile rushed rapidly across the
screen from one end of the frame to the other! Oh, what fun! And the
shadow people in it seemed evidently out for a joy ride. One wondered
that the automobile didn’t spill them out till Joyce turned the frame
around and showed Jimsi that the automobile was cut out of heavy paper
and that it and the people were all one piece!
“I’d like to see one of your motion picture plays,” declared Jimsi.
“Can’t you start one and make it go right through from beginning to
end?”
“If it were only dark, I could,” said the little lame girl. “But you
see Mother needs the light for her sewing just now. So we can’t draw
the curtains. I’ll show you my scenery instead. Some other time we’ll
make the whole motion picture play— Wouldn’t it be fun for the paper
dolls, when I have made mine! Your paper dolls and mine can go to see
the pictures: we’ll have a big time! Maybe, we can make up a new play
and I can show you how to cut the scenery for it—shall I?”
“What plays have you made?”
“Well,” said the little lame girl, “you know I read a great deal. I
make the plays of the stories that I read. I made _Alice in Wonderland_
for one. I traced the pictures from the illustrations in my book and
cut them out of heavy wall paper. (One can use cardboard for furniture
and scenery and actors, only it’s more expensive, you know.) I traced
most of my actors but not all. Some I had to draw—I’m not very good at
drawing because I never had lessons. Mother says, _she_ thinks I could
draw if I did have lessons but I just do the best I can without.”
“_I_ think,” Jimsi insisted, “I think that you must know how to draw
pretty well to cut out outlines of people from paper.”
“Oh, no,” contradicted Joyce. “Sometimes I can’t think the way things
ought to look. Then I go through some pictures in a book and when
I find an outline that will be good to use, I copy it. Or else,
sometimes, I just double a piece of thin paper and cut out the way
_little_ children do to make paper dolls when they make both sides
exactly alike. Mother used to make dolls in strings that way when I was
small.”
“I saw _Alice in Wonderland_ in moving pictures,” said Jimsi. “It was
the crow who gave us all tickets once when Aunt Phoebe was visiting us.
And I saw _Cinderella_ with Mary Pickford. _Did you?_”
The little lame girl smiled. “Yes, the Good Crow gave me a ticket for
it, and Mrs. Smith who has an automobile carried me up there. Wasn’t it
lovely!”
The two little girls gazed into each other’s eyes, beaming. “After
that, I made a play of Cinderella,” said Joyce. “Mine was just a kind
of paper doll play, but I had ever so much fun doing it. Sometime, I’ll
show it all to you when it is dark and we can use a candle. Here’s the
fairy godmother!”
She held up a silhouette doll cut with a long cloak and a pointed hat.
The godmother had a wand in her hand. One would have known anywhere
that it was Cinderella’s fairy!
“Here’s the pumpkin,” Joyce explained. “See! And here’s the coach! And
here’s Cinderella before the fairy transformed her! (I had to make
a second Cinderella figure for the play _after_ the fairy touched
her with the wand.) The way I do this is to change the figures very
quickly. It takes a good deal of skill to act it out right. I had
long times when I practiced with the figures last autumn. Then, when
I thought I could do it perfectly, I’d give a motion picture play for
Mother and Daddy in the evening. Often Miss Phoebe would come in to see
my plays. She liked them. She used to help me sometimes. _She_ thinks
it’s fun!”
“We could make _Red Riding Hood_ into a motion picture play,” suggested
Jimsi. “We could make the bushes for the woods by cutting the paper out
irregularly like the outline of bushes if one saw them in shadow. You
cut trees, didn’t you?”
The little lame girl assented. “I’ve cut trees and fences and little
hills and the outlines of houses and—oh, ever so many things more than
I can think of. In _Alice in Wonderland_, I really made a rabbit hole
and when Alice was in the field, I made the funny rabbit go walking by
and go down it and I made Alice follow him and—”
“_How_ did you ever do it!” exclaimed Jimsi. “_I_ don’t see how you did
that!”
“You see how I made the field by putting bushes and a fence in the
frame, don’t you?”
Jimsi nodded.
“The rabbit hole was a kind of oval with the middle part cut out,” went
on the little lame girl. “All I had to do to make the rabbit go _down_
was to pass the rabbit figure right into the centre of that and then
draw him quickly away out of sight. It was the same with Alice. And oh,
I did have such a splendid Pool of Tears with the mouse swimming in it!
I made the Walrus and the Carpenter and Humpty Dumpty and _everything_!”
“What play could _we_ give?”
“We might make one up!”
“What would it be about?”
They wondered.
“It would be harder to make one up than to copy a story,” thought Jimsi.
“I tell you what we could do,” suddenly flashed Joyce. “It isn’t
exactly a _play_, but it would be fun even if it wasn’t a real story.
We could make Mother Goose motion pictures!”
“That sounds nice,” agreed Jimsi. She waited for the little lame girl
to explain.
“We’d cut out a scene for Mother Hubbard’s house, you know,” pursued
the little lame girl. “Then when we’d made the cupboard and the chairs
and things, we could cut out Mother Hubbard and the dog and make a
motion picture of it—just a short one.”
“And _Jack and Jill Went Down the Hill_!”
“And _The Lion and the Unicorn_!”
“And _Little Bo-Peep_ and _Little Boy Blue_, too.”
“And—and—”
But right here, just exactly as Cinderella’s clock had struck twelve
strokes, so the clock on the mantel of the little lame girl’s fireplace
struck, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding,
ding—DING!
Oh, dear! There it was exactly the time when Jimsi had promised Aunt
Phoebe to come home!
She jumped from her chair. “Oh, I was having such a good time,” she
declared. “I didn’t know that it was anywhere near twelve. Oh, dear! I
hate to say good-bye. I’ve had a perfectly splendid time—but I haven’t
shown you my paper dolls at all! And the crow told me to show you _my_
crow play and here I’ve just been listening to yours! But I’ll leave my
paper dolls for you to look at and the toy furniture too. You’ll see
how it is done. Then, some time when I come over, I’ll take them back.
I’ll take my Magic Book home with me. Good-bye and _thank you_!”
“Come back soon,” sang the little lame girl as Jimsi turned to wave
from the street. “Come _soon_!”
Then Jimsi waved a frantic and happy “Yes,” and sped back to Aunt
Phoebe’s. She burst into the study where Aunt Phoebe was putting away
her papers and clearing her desk. “Oh, oh,” she laughed, “do you know
what I think, Aunt Phoebe?”
She waited.
“_I_ think,” she beamed, “that your crow is about the nicest crow
_ever_! The little lame girl told me all about the motion picture play
he gave her and I didn’t even have a chance to tell her about the paper
dolls! We hadn’t half begun to play when the clock struck twelve! Oh,
dear! I didn’t want to come right away—but I tell you what I’m going to
do: I’m going to write to Henry and tell him about the crow’s motion
pictures. He’d love to make them. He could act out _Robinson Crusoe_
and _Treasure Island_.”