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These smallest of all puppets are little figures that fasten to the back of the hand, and are fashioned so that your forefinger and middle finger form the legs of the puppet. The operator wears long gloves with two fingers cut out, and either wears black clothing or works in front of a black backdrop which makes the arm that is working the puppet hardly noticeable. Mrs. White and Mrs. Legg give shows with them, teach the making of them, and manufacture and sell finger puppets.

Mrs. White and Mrs. Legg and their children have worked with puppets and marionettes for many years and teach puppetry classes every Saturday for the Topeka Recreation Commission. They have given many marionette shows for the entertainment of various organizations, and in spite of their busy schedule they have presented many benefit shows for sick and crippled children and do volunteer work at the Topeka State Mental Hospital.

It was their work in the hospitals which led them into making and manipulating finger puppets. They are the most portable of all puppets, need no elaborate stage or backgrounds, and use only a few small and simple props. You can move the show from room to room with a minimum of effort in a matter of minutes. Finger puppets are ideal for small intimate groups.

Not only is it easy to show the patient but it is the easiest form of puppetry to teach the patient and the only kind a patient can operate in bed.

Also, due to the simplicity of the puppets' construction, the easily obtained parts of which they are made, and the lack of any really messy steps in their construction, bed patients can be taught to make them and therefore it becomes a valuable form of occupational therapy.

The speed and ease of construction makes them ideal for work with mental patients whose interest and attention can not always be counted on to last through any long involved project requiring many sessions of work.

They furnish another valuable form of therapy after they are finished since the patient can amuse himself and others by operating them. Puppets are considered by psychiatrists to help the mentally disturbed act out their fears and frustrations sometimes when they are unable to talk about them.

BEFORE STARTING to teach the construction of the puppets Mrs. White and Mrs. Legg make the rounds with their little show. They find this is the best way to show the possibilities of their tiny performers and to inspire the patients to want to make one.

The show consists of a small portable tape recorder on which the musical accompaniment is recorded, a bridge table for a stage, and an overnight bag full of puppets and props. They wear black dresses and they pull on their long black gloves from which the forefingers and middle fingers have been cut. With their hands in their laps out of sight of the audience they arrange a finger puppet toy soldier on each hand, and soon four toy soldiers are marching and drilling in snappy formation to a military march. The march music ends and the soldiers disappear below the table top and are exchanged for two Indians with tom-toms who do a war dance and then row away in a little canoe. Props are placed deftly but unobtrusively on the table top and such is the magic of make-believe that you are almost unaware that human hands are working the dolls.

The Indians are followed by a Mexican couple. The man holds tiny maracas which he shakes while his partner in bright swirling skirts does the traditional hat dance on the brim of a gay Mexican hat.

This is followed by a circus act. A bareback rider in pink rides in on a white toy horse which is moved in it realistic fashion. When she dismounts she does what a real lady rider does, throws her legs to the side and slides off carefully. Two clowns enter, one riding on a trick mule (a wind-up toy from the dime store). The mule kicks and bucks until the clown falls off. The clowns do a trapeze act. A Chinaman carrying a tiny parasol walks a tight rope.

The music changes to ballet music and a ballerina in white net with a flower wreath in her hair does a toe dance. The music is all on tape which is timed to the various acts and plays continuously without being turned off and on. The music now changes to the "Skater's Waltz" and an ice skater in a blue velvet ice skating costume trimmed with white fur glides and turns through an ice routine. All her movements are carefully copied from those of a real skater except, of course, that she cannot do spins. But she can do figure eights.

The show ends with two prize fighters and a referee. As in many a real fight the referee is often embroiled in the action. The boxer who is knocked down nonchalantly crosses his legs and waits for the count to be almost finished before rising to fight again. Finally, both are knocked out simultaneously and are both counted out by the referee.

Mrs. White and Mrs. Legg say that after a show almost everyone wants to make a puppet to carry out some idea of his own.

THIS IS the way Mrs. White and Mrs. Legg tell you to make the puppets: First, a little pillow about two inches wide and three inches long is made and stuffed with cotton. This, of course, may be varied considerably. If you are making a fat man you make a fat pillow. If she is a shapely lady you may give her a trim waistline by wrapping a piece of adhesive tape tightly around the pillow, girdle fashion. Make a circle of ¼-inch elastic that will fit snugly around your hand and sew it to the little pillow. This is the body of the puppet and the elastic holds it to your hand. You curl the thumb, third, and little finger up into the palm of your hand, and the forefinger and middle finger will be the legs of the puppet.

Now you take a one-inch rubber ball, the kind children use to play jacks. Poke a hole half way through the ball with an ice pick, put a dab of rubber cement on the squared-off end of a meat skewer and push the skewer into the ball as far as it will go. The cement will keep the puppet from losing its head. Now push the pointed end of the skewer down into the pillow and adjust so there is enough space between the head and body to make a good neck and put a dab of glue on the skewer where it joins the pillow, to secure it.

Twist two pipe cleaners together on either side of the little pillow body. These are the arms. They will have to be cut off to make them the proper length. Little half-inch pieces of adhesive tape are folded over the ends to make the hands. These are cut into mitten shape with sharp little scissors and the fingers are marked on with pen or soft pencil. Wrap the arms with narrow adhesive tape to give bulk and strength.

Now you paint the head, neck and arms and hands. Any oil or casein paint will do but in class work airplane dope is usually used because it dries almost immediately. It does not come in flesh so you will have to mix white with a little red, yellow, and brown. Of course, if you are making a Chinese you will want more yellow, and if you are making an Indian you will use more brown, etc. As soon as the skin color is dry the features may be painted on with black paint and a very fine brush. Nail polish may be used for mouths. You can paint on mustaches and hair, or you can glue on yarn or embroidery thread or crepe hair. This is the stage where the puppet begins to take on a personality of its own.

NOW THE puppet is ready to dress. This is the most fun and the part that most determines the personality of the puppet. You can give your imagination full sway. In puppetry, clothes really make the man—or woman.

A gathered ruffle of net over pink satin underpanties, a bit of ribbon for a bodice, a few tiny flowers for her hair, and you have a ballerina. Pink plastic thimbles worn on the fingers make her ballet slippers.

A pair of blue trousers for the finger legs (of course they must be tailored in length to the finger length of the operator), a red coat criss-crossed with narrow adhesive tape, a fur button for a hat, and you have a toy soldier. You can even give him a tiny gun to hold.

A baggy suit of gay stripes or polka dots, with ruffles at the ankle, wrist and neck, a pointed hat of felt decorated with pompons cut from ball fringe and you have a clown.

An Indian is dressed in fringed chamois skin and has a brown face and a feathered head-band. You can make him a tom-tom from a one-inch piece of broom stick.

These are some of the possible characters but you can make almost anything your fancy dictates just by dressing and painting this simple basic puppet different ways.

ALTHOUGH MANY people enjoyed making and working these little figures, Mrs. White and Mrs. Legg found that there were always some who would rather have someone else make them. After each show people asked if they could buy puppets to use for gifts or for their children to play with. They were especially desired as gifts to bedfast children. Mrs. White and Mrs. Legg began to duplicate some of the favorite characters from their little show to order. As their sales increased they began to devise ways to make them in quantity. It was easier to make a dozen of one kind at a time, painting them all at once, cutting out a dozen pairs of trousers at once, etc.

Since they sold readily without effort they began to wonder how many they could sell if they really worked at it. They decided to try. They called on the toy buyer for a local department store and she was encouraging. They came away with an order and their little business venture was no longer in the amateur class.

They decided for practical purposes to concentrate on just four varieties. The Indian, the clown, the ballerina, and the toy soldier seemed to have the greatest popular appeal. They visited a local paper company and found a box that would fit their needs, a small, flat box with a transparent cellophane cover so that the figures could be displayed and handled without becoming shopworn. They inserted a cut-out paper hand in each puppet while packaging to make it clearer to the purchaser just how the hand of the operator fits into the puppet.

Their slogan is "Dilly-Dolls, the dolls that YOU bring to life," because when you insert your fingers into the doll and put the thimble shoes on your fingers, it seems to become a living thing and not just a doll.

They communicated with two other department stores in other towns and both readily agreed to give the puppets a try. One store was in Manhattan, Kansas. The other was in Atlanta, Georgia, a store Mrs. White visited while on a vacation. They wanted to have a trial run in several places to see what their reception would be. They have decided not to try to place them in any more stores at this time because their production time is limited and their schedule of teaching and giving shows, as well as their duties as housewives and mothers, limits their time.

Results have been encouraging. The stores reordered and in the few weeks before Christmas sold approximately a gross of the puppets. They sold about an equal amount to friends and people who saw their shows.

They now plan to see what energetic promotion will do for them. They plan to extend their manufacturing operations to cover the entire year and make them in quantities ahead of time instead of trying to produce them all in the busy two months before Christmas, when they were trying frantically to keep up with orders in between shows and teaching. They plan, also, if they can work out a mass production method, to interest a factory representative, or a salesman in adding Dilly-Dollies to his line. They feel that this venture has shown possibilities of leaving the realm of hobbies and becoming a successful small business.