is always a thing worth looking at, yet I promise you that there is more real enjoyment in making a panorama and exhibiting it, than there is in looking at twenty professional exhibitions.
of the pictures must be your first thought. In their selection you have the widest possible range of choice, from the “Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” to Roosevelt with the Rough Riders in Cuba, or from “The Pilgrim’s Progress” to “Jack the Giant-killer,” or “Mother Goose.”
To those who have acquired the happy art of expressing their ideas with pencil and brush, the painting of an original panorama need not be explained; but the great majority of boys are unable to make pictures, either with pencil or with brush, and for them there remains still another method, which for beginners is equally, if not more effective.
any boy, of ordinary ability, may make pictures galore by cutting the figures and even the backgrounds from illustrated papers, grouping and arranging them to suit himself, and pasting them neatly upon a long, strong strip or ribbon of paper, suited to winding and unrolling by means of two cylinders or rollers, as shown in Fig. 296.
first, then write out the number of illustrations you wish to make to tell the story; then hunt for a background here, a foreground there, and houses and people wherever they may be found. Paste the background on your strip of paper first, then the foreground, and next add the necessary number of people, vehicles, animals, and other objects.
upon a white background, will be found to be most effective. Giants may be made by taking large-sized prints of men, clipping off their heads and replacing the latter with heads of smaller men. Dwarfs may be made by using the small prints of men, and substituting big heads for the ones originally belonging to the figures.
naked and unadorned. But the machinery should be concealed, and for this purpose make a box, similar to the one shown in Fig. 297, which is called the stage. It is simply a narrow box, as shown in Fig. 298, with drapery arranged from the outer edges to a small frame at the rear. Fig. 297 is the front of the finished stage; Fig. 298 is the rear of same, denuded of its drapery.
Hiding in the cellar, basement, attic, or woodshed, of almost every house, are a lot of packing-cases, but if from any cause these boxes should be absent from their accustomed places, you must go to your grocer for the material for your stage.