used to produce those peculiar vocal effects in which Mr. Punch delights. It consists of a couple of pieces of tin, each about an inch and a quarter in length and three-quarters in breadth. These, which are slightly curved in the direction of their length, are laid one against the other (the concave faces inwards), with a piece of tape or China ribbon, of the same breadth, stretched tightly between them, and the whole bound firmly together with thread. This instrument is placed in the mouth, and is asserted to produce the Root-i-too-titoo! and other eccentricities of the Punch language.

It is customary to have a second or assistant showman, who stands outside the theater and forms the orchestra, for which purpose he is supplied with a set of Pandean pipes and a drum, or, for lack of these, with the best substitutes available. In a drawing-room, some obliging young lady at the pianoforte will generally render the performance independent of his musical aid. His duty is to converse with Mr. Punch, to "draw him out," to elicit his views on things in general, and his own domestic arrangements in particular, and last, but not least, by judicious repetition, in the form of questions or otherwise, to translate, so to speak, his observations to the audience.]

ABOUT THE THREE WISHES

I remember once seeing a puppet show-you who have read "Pinnochio" recall what a puppet is—in a little store far down-town in New York's most crowded section. It was a long, bare room, unventilated with hard, wooden benches running crosswise from wall to wall. A crowded stage at one end was dimly lighted by gas jets, and the footlights threw strange shadows on the faces and figures of the wooden heroes and heroines, and made ghostlike the strings by which they were worked. The owner of these puppets earned his livelihood in a factory by day, and all his wages went into his theater by night. The benches were but half filled with lovers of the ancient art of puppetry, and Signor-for he was an Italian was having a struggle to meet expenses.

His small son, Michael Angelo, helped in the show business, but whenever he had spare time he went upstairs - where the family lived - and, on the dining table, covered with a dingy red cloth, the dark-eyed boy drew pictures and dreamed of his ambition to be an artist. I do not remember whether or not he drew and painted scenes of mortal combat, such as filled the stage of the puppet theater below; but I do know that the tale which his father enacted, part after part, night after night, was not more romantic than the dreams of that small boy. I remember that he spoke then of the hope of someone rescuing him from his daily chores, and whisking him away to Italy, where he might draw large frescoes for churches, like the masters of old.

Salvatore Cascio loved his puppets, and he may still love them for all I know. There was a time in the past when every country honoured these inanimate figures, gaily painted and brightly dressed. Even in ancient Egypt, marionettes have been found in the excavations, revealing a life thousands of

years old. Every country has its story to tell of puppet shows and showmen. Mostly they were popular pastimes, with jugglery and dance and marvellous trickery, and they used to travel the country after the manner of Punch and Judy long before they became stationary performances in a roofed theater. An interesting volume by Helen H. Josephs, called "A Book of Marionettes", tells the history of these strange wooden

creatures.

It is not necessary for you to know the curious interest taken in marionettes by Maurice Maeterlinck, the Belgian dramatist, by Gordon Craig, the son of Ellen Terry. Nor does it matter much here if we do not dwell on the love of puppets shown by George Sand, the French novelist, or Anatole France. Then, too, in England, puppets have been championed by Robert Louis Stevenson, who has written an essay about them, “A Penny Plain and Two Pence Colored", by Arthur Symons, the poet, and Bernard Shaw, the playwright. Nor does it make any essential difference if we do not follow the interest in puppet shows by the Little Theaters of the country, — many of which have attempted the revival of the ancient form very successfully.

What is necessary here is to realize that one of the most distinctive puppet showmen at present is Mr. Tony Sarg, yes, the same Mr. Sarg who illustrated this book. He has an almost uncanny way of making his wooden friends human. He is always experimenting how to improve his puppets, and no one is better versed than he in the vagaries of his dolls. He has collected a large variety of them around him there is no artist who has a larger assortment of toys.

In selecting a play used by him, I feel that I have the best example of puppet revival. Mrs. Williamson has worked closely with Mr. Sarg, and has, so she says, invented a puppet smile of which she is vastly proud. These pullers of strings are continually adding to their tricks, and when plays are written for marionettes, stage business is put in for the purpose of sharpening ingenuity. To balance grace with grotesqueness is a difficult thing, to deal with transformation scenes such as are

to be found in Thackeray's "The Rose and the Ring”, to give reality to snake charming, oriental dancing and jugglery merely by the expert pulling of strings-is an accomplishment few puppet enthusiasts possess. Hence it is that Mr. Sarg has won a deserved reputation. Nothing thwarts him; he asks his dramatists to introduce strange tricks and fancies into their plays. Mrs. Williamson writes that though her adaptation of "The Three Wishes" is based on Count F. Pocci's version of the legend, which he wrote for the famous Papa Schmidt's Munich puppet theater, she has put in much stage business for the especial delight of Mr. Sarg.1 In other words he likes complex puppet action. And for that reason he is anxious to give an arrangement of "Don Quixote."

He drifted into the puppet life through his love for toys. And it was while he was an artist in London, with a studio which was no other than the Old Curiosity Shop, made famous by Charles Dickens, that his friend, Dorothy Neville, who had written a history of toys, fired his imagination for puppets. So you may say that this friend started his interest in puppets, just as his grandparents did, who left him their collection of toys. What he did in his studio made London artistic Bohemia hail him as a novel puppet showman. And so, when he came to New York, Mr. Winthrop Ames, the theater manager, engaged him for a season at the Little Theater, where the marionettes made their professional bow. Since which time, Tony Sarg's puppets have grown to be a yearly expectancy in New York City. His repertory has allowed the fairy element to dominate; his puppets have floated in the air, his ani

1 Mr. Sarg has written the following directions which may help in understanding the technical tricks introduced into "The Three Wishes."

ACT I. The Fairy is secluded in the tree, with strings and wire running up the treetrunk, and fastened at the top, out of sight; another string, when pulled, releases a large enough piece of tree-bark to fall down, in order to enable the fairy to leave the tree.

ACT II. Margaret has a tiny loop fixed to her nose; through this a string leads right into a pocket of her apron, where lie concealed the sausages which later appear on her

nose.

The sausages, which appear suddenly in the empty plate on the table, are let down during the flashes of lightning; they hang on a string, and they disappear the way they

come.

NOTE. The fairy's body consists entirely of soft flowing material, with nothing solid except head and hands. This gives her lovely grace when she floats in mid-air.

mals have moved humourously near to the real thing, his human beings have gone through surprising transformations. Such novelty has attracted not only the young but the old to his entertainments, so that there is truth in his advertisement that his plays are "for children from six to sixty.'

Such an eager artist as Mr. Sarg, with the dominant enthusiasm of a boy about him, is always adapting out of the past some of the folk art which used to delight the young and old in days gone by. For the moving picture he has just completed a form of animated silhouette, based on ancient Chinese Shadowgraphs, or, as the French called them, after they had been perfected under the enthusiastic hand of Lemercier de Neuville, Ombres Françaises. At the famous Parisian restaurant, Chat Noir, these plays -so lovingly described by Anatole France, — attained a delicacy of colour which suggested their future possibilities. And Mr. Sarg has gone back to these sources for his inspiration.

Thus, with his puppets and his puppet theater which he is devising so that boys and girls may have one to play withand his shadow pictures - he is doing much for the revival of an ancient art. How I wish he would silhouette Thackeray's poem, "A Tragic Story", commencing

"There lived a sage in days of yore,
And he a handsome pig-tail wore;

But wondered much and sorrowed more

Because it hung behind him."

With all the novel devices which spring to life in his studio, there is no better companion for entertainment than Mr. Sarg. It would be a pleasure to concoct a puppet play with him. But the next best thing is to have him, with his facile brush and pen, to decorate this book.