Handicraft for boys

There is a feature of home life that the heads of too many families overlook and that is getting together and having an evening of entertainment which the youngest as well as the oldest member can enjoy.

This is not at all a hard thing to do but as it takes time to get the props together to give it with—which neither your father or mother can well spare even if they had the inclination—it is up to you as the boy of the family to see that it is done.

It is a noble plan to give a divertisement, or soirée[116] (pronounced swa´re) as the old time magicians used to call it, once every month and you will find after you have given the first one that all of your folks will look forward to the coming of the next one with interest and with pleasure.

Moreover, you should let them know what the next divertisement is to be a couple of weeks before it comes off and then let all hands join in and talk about it whenever the spirit moves them. Naturally since you know all about it and they don’t know anything about it, questions will be in order and you are the one who will have to answer them; and don’t try to make a secret of anything you have done or are going to do unless it is magic or some allied subject of mystery. After the divertisement is over it will furnish food for conversation for a long time to come.

Now while I have used the words entertainment and divertisement, both of which mean about the same thing and that is amusement, and while you should always strive to make your talks as light and recreational as you can you do not need to stick to frothy subjects altogether but instead you should alternate them with scientific demonstrations. In this way you will not only please and develop good fellowship in the family, but you will instruct the members of it at the same time.

Finally, don’t make your divertisements too long. Better by all means make each one only 15 or 20 minutes long and have everybody in high good humor and saying that it was all too short, than to give them an hour and have everybody gappy and bored half-to-death.

Cartoons While You Wait.

—This is a good feature to start off your season’s divertisements with. Make a substantial easel on which to set a large drawing board as shown in Fig. 116, or you can fasten the paper to a wall with thumb tacks if you live in a home and not in a residence.

Get a dozen sheets of good white print paper—you can buy a quire (24 sheets) 24 × 36 inches for 25 cents—and tack ¹⁄₂ a dozen sheets to your drawing board or the wall. Also buy a stick of black marking crayon,[117] which is better than chalk or charcoal for it makes a heavy black line that will not smut, blur or rub off.

Drawing the Cartoons.

—Start in with your crayon in hand and explain that what you propose to do is to show the principles upon which free-hand drawing is based. Then make a simple line drawing of the boxer reaching for the maxillary of his invisible opponent as shown in Fig. 42, over in the chapter called Drawing Simply Explained, and then draw the horse galloping home on the three-quarter stretch.

Next draw around these simple line figures, which are really the skeletons of the man and beast, the outlines as shown in Fig. 43. If you are not expert in free hand drawing you can trace these figures on the paper in faint lines with a lead-pencil before you begin your performance, and then all you have to do is to mark over the lines with the crayon.

After you have made these drawings and explained all about them tear off the sheet and on the clean one draw the outline of a man as shown in Fig. 44 and mark on the proportions of the human body. Have your next sheet ruled off into squares with the lines 2 inches apart; draw in the face and at the same time explain that this makes it easy for any one to get the features in proportion.

Now comes the grand finale[118] (pronounced fi-na´-le) and that is your cartoons.[119] You should practice drawing these and also have some patter[120] about each one so that when you do them for the family audience your tongue will be as clever as your fingers. You can begin by explaining how the expressions of one’s face—that is the way the features look when the mind is at rest or is excited—can all be represented by a few very simple lines.

Draw eight circles 5 or 6 inches in diameter in a double row on the paper with your marking crayon as shown at A in Fig. 117. Now you say first that sleep can be represented by four straight horizontal lines and you draw them as shown in the first circle. Next draw four vertical lines in the second circle and before you can say awake your little audience will see it and laugh its approval.

Joy is represented by four little arcs, or curved lines with the ends of each pointing up, which you draw in the third circle, while sorrow is, of course, shown by four curved lines the ends of which point down as in the fourth circle, since the emotion of sorrow is the opposite to that of joy.

Show how modesty is depicted by drawing four little angles in the fifth circle with the vertex, or point of each one at the bottom, while disdain, which is the reciprocal of modesty, can be illustrated in the sixth circle by reversing the positions of the angles and having their vertices at the top.

To portray surprise all you have to do is to draw four little circles inside the seventh large circle and you will have caught the expression. Finally in the eighth circle draw two slanting lines for the eyes, a vertical line for the nose and an angle with the ends of the lines pointed down and you will have a very good representation of anger, (or maybe it’s a Chinaman.)

Now without my telling you how to draw the cartoons shown at B C and D in Fig. 117, draw each one of them half a dozen times on a sheet of paper with your marking crayon and when you get before your audience you will be able to do them like a lightning crayon artist.

Thirty Minutes of Chemistry.

—Here are some very pretty and easily made experiments in chemistry and as you perform them you can give the explanation I have written about each one which will serve as the patter.

The Mystic Glass of Milk.

—The Effect.—You show a glass of perfectly clean water and blow through it with a glass tube, clay pipe or a straw when it becomes to all intents, though not to all purposes, milk of the cow variety. See Fig. 118.

The Cause.

—To perform this chemical trick get 50 grams of good quicklime and powder it in a pint milk bottle. Let it stand for 24 hours and shake it every once in a while. Let it stand another 24 hours and then pour off the clear solution, which is called lime water[121] and this is the common name of mystic milk.

The Chemical Action.

—In the first place the lime in the water is calcium hydroxide and when you blow through the lime water the carbon dioxide in your breath acts on the calcium hydroxide and forms a white insoluble powder commonly known as limestone.

Since the calcium carbonate does not dissolve in the water it remains suspended in the solution and this gives it an opalescent hue that doth verily look like the lactic fluid which is white but woe unto the milkman who sells it as such.

For the Fun of the Thing.

—By pretending you can tell which boys and which girls are in love hand around several glasses of ordinary water and as many of clear lime water. You must see to it, of course, that those whom you want to make believe are in love are given the lime water; then have everybody blow and it is a sure sign that those who change the water into milk are in love.

The Magic Fountain.

—The Effect.—You show an empty bottle, or Florence flask, and then push a cork with two holes in it into the mouth of the bottle. Next push a glass tube having a nozzle on one end through one of the holes in the cork until the nozzle nearly touches the bottom of the bottle.

Through the other hole in the cork push a medicine dropper, or fountain pen filler. The end of the long tube projects down into a bowl containing water which you have colored blue[122] either with indigo or with copper sulphate or you can make a beautiful violet by dissolving in it a little potassium permanganate. The arrangement of the apparatus is shown at A in Fig. 119.

Now when you squeeze the bulb of the medicine dropper the colored water rushes up the tube and squirts out of the nozzle into a pretty fountain until the flask is nearly full.

The Cause.

—Instead of the bottle being empty as it looks to be, you have previously filled it with hydrogen chloride gas of which 500 volumes will dissolve in 1 volume of water.

The medicine dropper is filled with water and when you squeezed it a few drops of water is forced into the bottle and dissolves a large part of the gas that is in it. This leaves a vacuum when, of course, the atmospheric pressure on the colored water in the bowl forces it up through the nozzle to fill the vacuum.

This water dissolves the rest of the gas in the flask and more water is forced up until the bottle is nearly full of it, all of which produces a very mysterious and at the same time a mighty pretty effect.

How to Make Hydrogen Chloride Gas.

—To make this gas take another bottle and fit a two hole stopper into it; in one hole put a funnel and in the other an L tube as shown at B 119.

In the bottom of the bottle put ¹⁄₃ of a cup of common table salt; put a straight tube down into the Florence flask you want to fill and connect this tube and the L tube with a piece of rubber tube as is also shown at B.

The apparatus set up, pour sulphuric acid down the funnel, a very little at a time until the salt is all gone and then fit the cork with the long nozzle tube and the medicine dropper in it, into the mouth of the bottle filled with the hydrogen chloride gas.

The Vicious Soap Bubbles.

—The Effect.—Show a dish of soap-suds and then blow bubbles with the apparatus described below.

When the bubbles take on a size of about 3 inches in diameter shake them off and they will rise slowly and gracefully in the air. Before they get out of reach touch them with a long lighted taper and they will explode viciously with a sharp report like that made by a revolver.

The Cause.

—The bubbles are filled with a mixture of hydrogen gas and oxygen gas and when these two gases are simply mixed they form a very explosive compound which is called detonating gas.

When the flame is brought close enough to the bubble it fires the gases in it, and they explode and combine chemically to form water. The apparatus necessary to do this experiment with is shown in Fig. 120.

It consists of (1) a hydrogen gas generator and (2) an oxygen gas generator.

The hydrogen bottle or flask is fitted with a two hole stopper through which runs a glass funnel and an L tube just as described in the fountain experiment and shown at B in Fig. 119. Connected to the L tube is a length of rubber tubing into the other end of which another L tube is fitted.

The oxygen bottle or flask is fitted with a single hole stopper which has an L tube running through it as shown at B in Fig. 119. Connected to the L tube is fixed another length of rubber tubing and in the free end of this is fixed another and shorter L tube. Now place the two short L tubes side by side and cement them together with sealing wax. A long length of rubber tube is forced on over the ends of the double tube and, finally, a clay pipe is fitted into the free end of the rubber tube, all of which is shown in Fig. 120.

Set the bottles or flasks as far apart as possible and in the hydrogen bottle put a handful of granulated zinc. Dilute hydrochloric acid[123] is poured down the funnel on the zinc when hydrogen will be set free, or generated as it is called.

Put a small handful of a mixture of 2 parts of potassium chlorate and 1 part of manganese dioxide, finely powdered, in the oxygen bottle and then set a Bunsen burner under it when it will give off oxygen. When the two gases leave the short L tubes they mix in the long rubber tube and by the time they reach the clay pipe you will have detonating gas all right.

Caution.

—Do not bring a flame anywhere near the apparatus and as a further precaution wrap a thick towel around the hydrogen flask.

The bubbles that are blown rise in the air because both the hydrogen and the oxygen are lighter than the air.

The Uncanny Wheel.

—The Effect.—A pitcher is shown full of emptiness and then a cardboard wheel, 4 inches in diameter, with buckets, or cones 1 inch high and ³⁄₄ inch across glued to the rim and which is mounted on a wire so that it can be revolved, is passed for examination.

Placing the wheel on the table you hold the empty pitcher above it and pour out nothing on it when the wheel will turn round just as though you were pouring water on it. It is indeed uncanny. The idea is shown at A in Fig. 121.

The Cause.

—But it is all canny enough when you know how it is done. While the pitcher is apparently empty you have, forsooth, previously filled it with a gas called carbon dioxide. This gas is 1¹⁄₂ times as heavy as air.

The cardboard wheel does not move in the air because the latter pushes on all parts of it equally. When, however, you pour the carbon dioxide gas on it from the pitcher, since it (the gas) is heavier than the air it fills the little buckets and makes them heavier just as surely as if you poured water on them; and hence the wheel revolves.

How to Make Carbon Dioxide Gas.

—Take a perfectly dry bottle or flask of the kind shown in the fountain experiment; fit it with a single hole stopper and push a glass tube through it until it nearly touches the bottom as pictured at B.

Set the bottle at a slant and put a mixture in it of equal amounts of powdered copper oxide (that is cupric oxide) and wood charcoal. Heat this mixture over a Bunsen burner until it glows and for a few minutes longer; the bottle will then be full of the carbon dioxide gas.

Pour it into a glass pitcher and put a sheet of glass over it to keep the air away from it until you are ready to perform the uncanny experiment.

Giving a Travelogue.

—A travelogue is simply a talk on travel, or on a country, illustrated with pictures of some kind.

To be able to give a travel talk does not mean necessarily that you must have traveled or been in the country you are going to tell about but if you have done neither, it does mean that you must read up on it.

To do this get several good books on whatever country you intend to talk on, read them carefully, and then outline a route just as though you had gone over it yourself, but this must of course conform to the pictures you can get.

Now there are four methods you can follow to show a series of pictures and you can make your choice according to the amount of money you want to invest in it.

(1) The first and least expensive way is to cut a dozen or twenty pictures out of magazines, arrange them according to your route and build up your talk around them. As you describe each place pass the pictures, which should be mounted on cardboard, in turn to each person present.

(2) A better way is to get a set of stereographs of the trip or the country you are to talk on and a stereoscope[124] and pass the picture showing the view and the instrument to each person present.

Each stereograph, as the picture is called, is formed of two pictures of the same scene made from slightly different viewpoints and when the observer looks through the lenses at them they blend into one image when the scene stands out wonderfully clear and apparently in three dimensions. The only drawback of the stereoscope as an aid to a travel talk is that only one person can look at a picture at a time.

(3) A far better plan than either of the above schemes is to make a reflectoscope[125] as described in the chapter called Some Kinks in Photography. You can show any kind of a picture in a reflectoscope if it is not larger than 3×5 inches but picture postcards are especially good to use for a travelogue or a talk of any kind and they show up nicely when thrown on a screen with a reflectoscope.

(4) Finally either make, or better, if you can afford it, buy, a magic lantern[126] that will take the regular full size lantern slides, namely, 3¹⁄₄ × 4¹⁄₄ inches square. Sets of lantern slides[127] for travelogues or talks on any subject can be rented cheaply and in these days of cheap electricity you can throw a picture on the screen so big and bright and real that your offering is bound to be a success.

An Electrical Soirée.

—Experiments in electricity are always interesting to all however young or old, for of all the powers that have been harnessed by man it is the least tangible and yet the effects produced by it are the most spectacular.

Now there are some very extraordinary effects that you can show with static electricity[128] which do not require apparatus of any kind as you will presently see, but if you will make or buy a ¹⁄₂ inch induction coil[129] you can perform a series of classic experiments that will create a profound and lasting impression on all who see them.

Demonstrating Electricity Without Apparatus.

—Did you ever rub a cat in a dark room in the winter and see the sparks fly? Well this is one way to make electricity without apparatus though you need a cat[130] to do it with.

The Electrified Papers.

—But you can make a lot of electricity by simply rubbing a newspaper if you know how to rub it and it is perfectly dry.[131]

Tear off a strip of newspaper, lay it flat on a table and rub it with your finger nails as shown at A in Fig. 122. When you try to take the paper from the table you will find that it sticks to it quite tenaciously. This is because you have positively electrified the paper when you rubbed it and the surface of the table under it is negatively electrified by induction.[132] Now since positive and negative electricity attract each other, the paper and the table are pulled together.

How to Electrify a Person.[133]

—This is an experiment that will make your gathering giggle just as school girls giggle when they have their tintypes taken—that is without any real reason except that the idea strikes their mental funny bones.

To perform this experiment electrify a strip of newspaper as above and then hold it close to some one’s face; instantly there will be a mutual attraction between them and the paper will be drawn to and stick to his or her cheek. Put an electrified paper on the cheek of each person present as shown at B and tell them they belong to the same club. This will get a laugh but it will not lessen their interest in the experiment in the least.

How Like Repels Like.

—Electrify two strips of newspaper this time and hold them together by the ends. Instantly the free ends of the papers will fly apart for like signs of electricity repel each other.

That is, since both strips of paper are positively electrified and hence are of like signs, they repel each other. If they were negatively electrified they would repel each other just the same. In either case it shows that there is a force acting across the space between the two strips of paper.

Making Experiments With Apparatus.

—With a dry battery of two or three cells, an electric bell, a common steel magnet and an electromagnet, all of which you can easily make or buy[134] for a dollar or so, you can provide entertainment enough for ¹⁄₂ an hour’s demonstration, and food for thought to last a year.

The Induction, or Spark Coil.

—An induction coil is an apparatus for changing a direct low pressure, but large quantity current from a battery into an alternating high pressure but small quantity current, which is called high tension, or high potential, electricity.

With an induction coil you can make any number of wonderful experiments such as miniature streaks of lightning, lighting up Geissler tubes, which produce brilliant and beautiful colors showing the electric discharge in gases, etc., etc. By fixing these tubes to a small electric motor[135] so that they can be revolved while the high tension current is passing through them, the effects are further heightened.

Demonstrating Wireless Telegraphy.

—All you have to do to make your induction coil into a wireless transmitter, that is, the sending apparatus, is to put a couple of brass balls on the points of the spark-gap, fasten a wire to one of them and the other end to a nail in the wall near the ceiling and then connect the other one with a wire which ends in a small sheet of brass or copper that rests on the floor as shown at A in Fig. 123.

To make a receiver that will tap out the signals you send on your transmitter, you will need (a) a coherer, (b) a relay, (c) an electric bell and (d) a dry cell. You can make the coherer but the other three pieces of the apparatus you had better buy.

For the coherer cut off a piece of brass rod ¹⁄₈ inch in diameter and 1¹⁄₄ inches long, file the ends off even and slip them through the holes in the binding post. Put a pinch of nickel and silver filings into a piece of glass tubing about an inch long and push the ends of the rod into the tube with the filings between them.

Screw the rods into a couple of binding posts set 2 inches apart on a block as shown at B and your coherer is done.

Connect up the coherer, relay, tapper and dry cell on a board as shown in the wiring diagram at C; fasten a wire to one of the rods of the coherer and to a nail near the ceiling; fix a wire to the other coherer rod and to a small sheet of brass or copper which rests on the floor.

Now when you press the key or button of the sender, which is on one side of the room, the bell of the receiver, which is on the opposite side of the room, will ring out a signal. The fact that there are no wires connecting the sender with the receiver will create much wonder.

The theory of wireless telegraphy is rather deep but you will find it simply explained in my Book of Wireless published by D. Appleton and Co., New York City.

Reading Palms for Fun.

—Many years ago when P. T. Barnum was exhibiting a sacred white elephant, which was nothing more nor less than a small Indian elephant covered with whitewash, and the good folks were breaking their necks to pay their hard-earned coin to see it, the great showman remarked that “the American people love to be humbugged.” And they do. Now palmistry is a kind of mild humbuggery on a small scale and for an evening of fun and bunkum-squint you can’t find anything to beat it.

First of all there are three words that are constantly used in the art which you must know how to pronounce correctly or you will surely show your ignorance. The first is palm, pronounced pom; the second is palmist, pronounced pol´-mist, and the third is palmistry, which is pronounced pol´-mis-try; now be sure to say them right.

While nearly every one believes in palmistry there is nothing in it in-so-far as it is possible to read a person’s character or to divine one’s future by means of it; but there are some things you can tell from the hand you are reading and these are if its owner is or is not in good health and whether the brain that goes with it is mechanically inclined or is of an artistic temperament.

Further you can gather—not from the hand but from the face, stature, carriage, and mannerisms of the boy or girl or the man or woman whose hand you are supposed to be reading—a good deal about his or her temper and temperament and also about her or his foibles and peculiarities. In fact the palmistry of the palmists is simply a study in deduction, very much a la Sherlock Holmes, of the person as a whole, and it is by no means limited to an investigation of the hand alone.

How to Read Palms.

—There are two things which you should learn before you begin to read palms and these are (1) the names of the different parts of the hand, and (2) the lines and mounts of the hand.

The names given and the corresponding parts of the human hand are shown at A in Fig. 124; these are the scientific names and you will add very greatly to your stock of knowledge to get them down by heart.

The names, of the lines and the mounts of the hand are given and shown at B and these are the terms that are used by palmists. You will observe that the eminences are called mounts and these are named after the planets of the solar system, for the ancients supposed that they were inter-related. To get by as a palmist it goes without saying that you must have these all down pat.

To find out what kind of health the subject is in, grip the hypothenar eminence, which is the side of the hand opposite the pollux, or thumb, between your thumb and fingers and squeeze it a little; if it is perfectly firm and the palm has a good healthy color you are quite sure that its owner is in good health, but if the flesh is soft and is not elastic and if the palm is pale and bloodless you will be quite right in saying that the subject’s health is not good, nay worse, it is even bad, and you will not offend your subject by so saying.

The length of the life line is supposed to determine how long the subject who owns it will live but even if you find one broken off short never tell the person that he or she will live only a short time. Indeed to be a successful palmist tell every one whose hand you read that she or he will live to be anywhere from 80 to 108, and you’ll be on the safe side.

The line of the heart, according to palmistry, indicates the affections and passions of a person. Always tell a fellow that he is a great lover and that he is constant, but you can say to a girl that she is capricious, which means about the same thing as being fickle, and both the man and the maid will be highly pleased. The line of Saturn is the line of disposition and you must always make the subject just as sweet and angelic as possible unless you want her to break up the séance[136] then and there and hold a wake to prove you’re right.