The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1901-12-26
BEASTS BEHIND THE FooTLIGHTs,
something About How Stage AMI
mails Are Built and Worked.
From the London New Penny Maga-

Something About How Stage AMI
mails Are Built md Worked.
From the London New Penny Maya
zine.
Stage animals are very proud of the
organs they can move. If they can roll
an eye, they never cease to roll it so
long as they think any one is looking;
and if they can switch a tail, they
switch it. This weakness for showing
off gets them into trouble sometimes
just as weaknesses in general get real
animals into trouble. Hence, an ele-
plant with fine, freely moving tail,
began to switch that tail with great
vigor while on it's way to the front of
the house. Just as it was emerging
from the side into view the woolly end
OF the tail, in its abandoned flights
caught fire. The fire spread as rapidly
as dry, gummy canvass and dry withes
could make it spread and the elephant
appeared in blaze. Fortunately for
the men inside, the flames were on the
top, and the first intimation they re-
ceived of the confiagration was a feel
ing as of something cold strike them
on the back. 1t was water, and the
water increased, and they were
drenched and Mortified, for they knew
not whence it came, or what it meant,
or what might come next.
One of the cleverest elephants is that
made for a celebrated performer. 1t
picks up biscuits with it's trunk and
puts them into its mouth. The secret
of the prehensile power of the trunk
lies in the pair of pincers with which
it is fitted, and which are, of course,
concealed. Monsters of the deep" on
fho fa NO rio
lures; red herrings, bloaters or had
docks run easily to four feet long, and
though they have all been taken long
enough ago from their natural element
to be already cured and offered for
sale in the market, unblushingly show
every sign of life. Even the lobster,
though it has been boiled, as it's color
shows-for it is red-never ceases to
move it's mandibles and antennae while
before the public.
swordfish is, no doubt, very i'm
pressive creature on the stage, the
sword naturally receiving great en-
phasis from the maker and special pub
licity from the man inside. 1t is thus
a common thing for that sword to get
into trouble, and for the poor fish in a
stage procession to ask a harmless
mussel or oyster to take care of my
sword! A dragon thirteen feet long
and emitting flames, makes us think
that we must have got away from can
vas, wickerwork, and paper, else the
flames are certainly not real. The flames,
however, are real enough, and a man
inside ignites and fans the spirit-sat-
urated cotton-with his breath. 1t is
out of a canvas mouth, too, that they
come, but that mouth is fitted with as
bestos cloth.
Stage rats introducing us to another
method of locomotion on the part of
insnimate straw and canvas. Rats are
made big enough to admit small boys:
in such cases, of course, the boys do
the moving. But the common stage
rat, which sells at IS. 3D., is usually
stuffed with straw. There is no man
or boy or other animate thing inside.
Power to move is impaired to them
from without, by means of invisible
wires attached to- their noses, and ma
nipulated from behind the scenes. Their
movement consists of only a glide, and
that is as nearly as possible the true
movement of the real rat, it being the
movement that creates the least dis
turbance, and is, therefore, the most
suitable for a hunted animal. Stage
rats may glide in a straight line, or
they may zigzag and perform in more
or less elaborate ways, according to the
arrangements made on the stage. These
arrangements comprise the fixing of
pulleys on the floor or in the wall or
elsewhere, and the laying of invisible
wires over them. The more elaborate
the arrangement of pulleys, the more
varied will be the lines of movement
traced by the rats.