Having progressed thus far, the student will no doubt begin to consider seriously the desira­bility of burdening himself with a family—a ventriloquial family—with the idea of either pur­chasing outright what he needs or of making such figures for himself.

At the outset, however, I would state em­phatically that unless you are a natural mechanic and also something of an adept at wood carving you would better wait until you can either pur­chase the figures required or can pay for having the heads made by a professional wood carver. Such work usually costs from three to four dollars per head, according to the size, and two or three dollars more must be added for the painting, hair, etc. Then the body must be made and dressed—but this you can easily do yourself at little cost.

The small knee figures can be obtained, head, body and all, from dealers in magical goods for from about seven to ten dollars, and larger ones from the latter amount to thirty or thirty-five dollars, according to the size and movements re­quired; so very little is saved by having the heads made to order, and the result is not usually so satisfactory, unless a carver can be found to whom this work is familiar.

Of course if you are handy enough with tools to make your own heads, the saving is worth while, and I will now give you a few hints as to how the work may be done.

First, of course, you must determine how large you wish the heads to be. For exhibitions in drawing-rooms and small halls, a head measuring four inches from the top of the forehead to the chin and three inches from one side of the face to the other, with a depth—that is, from back of the head to the tip of the nose—of four and one-half inches, is a good size. For large halls and theatres the dimensions should be at least six inches from the forehead to the chin and four inches from one side of the face to the other, with a depth of five inches. In the case of the smaller head the neck should be about one and one-half inches long, and for the larger head two inches long. It should be understood that these heads are intended for what are usually called knee figures—the Irish and Negro boys. For larger figures to sit or stand, the dimensions should be slightly larger than those given for the larger head described.

In making such heads, the wood carver usually begins by getting out four pieces of soft pine, two of which (for the face and back of the head) are a trifle wider than the dimensions given from one cheek to the other and thick enough to allow the carving out of the features, including the nose.

The other two pieces should be wide enough to form, with the front and back pieces glued to them, a hollow box open only at the ends, large enough to give the dimensions for the head you want from front to back. When these pieces are firmly glued together they should look like "A" in Figure 2.

A smaller box of thinner wood, five or six inches long, and just large enough to fit inside one end of the larger one, is pushed into the latter for an inch or two and glued thereto to form the neck, being later rounded and cut off to the proper length. Or the neck may be made of a separate piece, attached after the head is fin­ished.

When this is ready, the nose should be marked out on the side chosen for the face and the wood cut away from it and shaped to form the cheeks and the forehead, with places for the eyes, etc.

In making the Irish face, the nose should be given a slightly upward tilt, the upper jaw should slant a little from the lip back to the nose, and the cheeks made prominent. The lips of the Negro should be thicker than those of other figures.

After the upper lip has been carved, an oblong hole should be made below it clear through the wood into the central hollow space, for the mov­able lower jaw to work in (B, Fig. 2). A piece of hard wood, narrow enough to play easily up and down in the hole, with its outer edge shaped to the semblance of the lower lip (C, Fig. 2), is pivoted in the opening, near its back edge by means of a straight piece of wire driven through the side of the face from cheek to cheek. Of course it is hardly necessary to say that this lower jaw should work easily on the wire which, after being driven through, should be cut off as close up to the cheek as possible on either side. Just back of the lips on both upper and lower jaws is a narrow ridge on which later the teeth are to be painted.

To this movable floor is then glued a strip of sheepskin or flexible leather, completely covering the cavity from the lower lip to the chin below. Before putting in the lower jaw "for keeps" as the boys say, a small screw ring should be in­serted in its underside, to which is fastened a piece of gut string or flexible picture-wire, long enough to reach down through the neck and well into the interior of the body which has yet to be made; and another screw-ring is inserted on the upper side near the back edge, to which is hooked a spiral spring strong enough to pull the mouth shut smartly after being opened by a tug on the picture wire below. This arrangement is shown at "D," Figure 2.

With the exception of the eyes, which may be obtained from a taxidermist at a cost of fifteen or twenty cents, and the hair, the head is then complete except for painting, which of course should be in flesh color with the cheeks well tinted in red. The teeth are merely suggested by alternate red and white stripes on the ridges back of the lips, and the eyebrows are painted in dark red or mahogany color.

The body, the length of which is determined by the size of the head, is simply a box, like that shown at "E," the hole in the top being for the neck. When the head is completed, the neck should be cut off at the right length and the opening in its lower end blocked with a round stick, hollow for half its length from the top. Through this extends the picture wire, termi­nating in a ring, which controls, when pulled down by the thumb, the movement of the lower jaw, as shown at "D."

After the head is placed in the body, a wire is driven through the neck stick close up to the top of the box to prevent the head from pulling out when in use. This may be fitted loosely enough to allow of being drawn out, making the head readily removable for packing.