The Art of Amusing / Being a Collection of Graceful Arts, Merry Games, Odd Tricks, Curious Puzzles, and New Charades. Together with Suggestions for Private Theatricals, Tableaux, and All Sorts of Parlor and Family Amusements.

CHAPTER VIII.

The Highlanders are a hardy race, inhabiting the north of Scotland. They are brave, hospitable, and exceedingly fond of dancing.

When you reflect that a very moderate nigger used to fetch one thousand dollars, it will be exhilarating to know that you can have a Highlander, with all his natural characteristics, for nothing. Yet such is our proposition to you on the present occasion.

Will you have him for nothing?

We assume, of course, that you have at least one hand. A foot will not answer.

You have a hand?

Well!

Get an old glove and cut off the thumb and fingers to about the extent represented in the annexed diagram.

Place the glove on your hand, and then hold your hand in the position represented below. You will now have a general idea of what is to constitute the substratum of the Highlander.

Now make a pair of little socks to fit your first and second fingers. Here is a picture of the style in which they should be gotten up. These socks can be made of white linen or calico, and painted with water-colors of the desired pattern—the shoes black and the socks plaid. If the colors are mixed with very little water they will not run on the cloth. We suggest water-colors because the plaid can be very neatly represented by cross lines of red and green. If, however, you have no water-colors, you can stitch the stockings across with red and green thread. It will be well to bear in mind that as your second finger is longer than the first, the stocking for the first must be stuffed out with cotton or wool to make it equal in length to the second.

THE HIGHLANDER TRICK. THE HIGHLANDER TRICK.—See page 101.

Now make a careful copy of our full-page picture opposite; stitch it on to the back of the glove; put the socks on your fingers, and your Highlander is ready to dance, as represented in the above cut.

You move about the fingers, simulating a man dancing the Highland-fling or double-shuffle, and the result will be very curious and eminently satisfactory.

Another variation of the same performance can be made, which will save the trouble of drawing a Highlander. It is done thus: You procure a kid glove, and cut it down as before. You will see by the subjoined cut how the hand looks with the glove on before it has been fixed up. A white kid glove is best, because on the white kid you can paint almost the entire dress with water-colors—blue vest, red sash, and black pantaloons. A little piece of some gay rag must, however, be stitched on each side to represent the jacket; the chief object of the jacket being to hide the knuckles of the third and fourth fingers.

Now, having fixed your glove and put it on, paint on your hand a face in the style of the following sketch, and your dancing Spaniard, or Terpsichorean Matadore, is ready for action. The glove forms a complete suit (barring the boots), which you can slip off and on with the greatest ease at pleasure.

If you have not a white kid glove wherewith to make the dress of the above-mentioned gentleman, you will have to sew a small piece of calico or paper in the proper place, for the shirt. You will also be obliged to make him a vest out of some little scrap of red or blue silk; in short, you must use your needle instead of your paint-brush. But this is plain enough and needs no further explanation.

There is one more item, however, which we must mention. It will be found rather difficult to paint moustaches on the hand so as to give them the right merry expression. The teeth, which lend so much life to the face, are troublesomely small to represent. We therefore think it best to draw a pair of moustaches exactly similar to the ones we subjoin, which can be made to stick in their place by the aid of a little diaclon or shoemaker's wax.

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