[Illustration]
Draw a figure of a witch riding on a broomstick, or a capering demon, on
a sheet of cardboard, and cut it clean out.
Make a square aperture in a partition facing a transparent screen, large
enough to comprise the figure, say twelve inches, and place the cut-out
board in it, tight as a pane of glass in its frame.
Let the part of the room where the audience sit be darkened, and the
only light pass through the hole in the partition, or rather through the
cut-out cardboard.
If but one light is held to the figure, the counterpart, enlarged
according to the distance between the screen and the picture, will be
single, but, on having three or more candles, the figures will be
trebled or quadrupled, and the effect will be startling and whimsical.
The limbs of such figures can be fashioned of wire, and the result is
highly amusing when a score of such figures are to be seen capering. The
jaws can move as if masticating, the arms may brandish a club, a
somersault may be executed, and so on. A ratchet and cogged wheel action
will make the movement backward and forward regular and fully
controllable.
The screen should be of cambric muslin, strained tightly, and soaked
with a varnish composed of picked gum-arabic and white starch, which
renders it diaphanous.