suppose, describing a similar contrivance.  As a devoted admirer of the “Alice” books, I determined to build a Humpty Dumpty of my own; but I left the model set by the author of the article mentioned, and constructed the figure on entirely different lines.  In the first place, the figure as described in the magazine had very few movements, and not very satisfactory ones at that; and in the second place, no attempt whatever was made to reproduce, even in a general way, the well-known appearance of Tenniel’s drawing.  Humpty, when completed, was about two feet and a half high.  His face, of course, was white; the lower half of the egg was dressed in brilliant blue.  His stockings were grey, and the famous cravat orange, with a zigzag pattern in blue.  I am sorry to say that the photograph hardly does him justice; but he had travelled to so many different places during his career, that he began to be decidedly out of shape before he sat for his portrait.

    [Illustration:  The Mechanical “Humpty Dumpty.”
    From a photograph.]

When Humpty was about to perform, a short “talk” was usually given before the curtain rose, explaining the way in which the Sheep put the egg on the shelf at the back of the little shop, and how Alice went groping along to it.  And then, just as the explanation had reached the opening of the chapter on Humpty Dumpty, the curtain rose, and Humpty was discovered, sitting on the wall, and gazing into vacancy.  As soon as the audience had had time to recover, Alice entered, and the conversation was carried on just as it is in the book.  Humpty Dumpty gesticulated with his arms, rolled his eyes, raised his eyebrows, frowned, turned up his nose in scorn at Alice’s ignorance, and smiled from ear to ear when he shook hands with her.  Besides this, his mouth kept time with his words all through the dialogue, which added very greatly to his life-like appearance.

The effect of his huge face, as it changed from one expression to another, was ludicrous in the extreme, and we were often obliged to repeat sentences in the conversation (to “go back to the last remark but one”) because the audience laughed so loudly over Humpty Dumpty’s expression of face that they drowned what he was trying to say.  The funniest effect was the change from the look of self-satisfied complacency with which he accompanied the words:  “The king has promised me—­” to that of towering rage when Alice innocently betrays her knowledge of the secret.  At the close of the scene, when Alice has vainly endeavoured to draw him into further conversation, and at last walks away in disgust, Humpty loses his balance on the wall, recovers himself, totters again, and then falls off backwards; at the same time a box full of broken glass is dropped on the floor behind the scenes, to represent the “heavy crash,” which “shook the forest from end to end";—­and the curtain falls.

Now, as to how it was all done.