People's Pilot, Volume 2, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 March 1893 — PAPIER MACHE GENERALS. [ARTICLE]

PAPIER MACHE GENERALS.

How the War Department Will Illustrate a Portion of Its Exhibit. Believing the sight the easiest channel whereby visitors may comprehend the intricacies of war maneuvers the United States government has adopted a full set of manikins to illustrate the war department exhibit, and will also make use of a few papier mache men in the fisheries exhibit These figures have the style and motion of the Columbian guards, are decidedly more polite to strangers, and carry themselves with the same nonchalant air that is peculiar to their be-tinseled contemporaries. Indeed the similarity is striking, as the dummies are constructed as a material that to the touch resembles the human skin. Breath, the use of tobacco and the power to become insole'nt without provocation —they have white gloves—are the only qualities lacking. The government will make the manikins of gome use. They will stand at the batteries, illustrating how a field piece 1b handled in action, or, clothed in the rougher habiliments of the plains, will bestride papier-mache mules and demonstrate how a pack train appears on the plains of the far west. The make-believe men will also serve to display the different uniforms in use in the army. Just now the manikins are concealed in hoods of black cloth and are reposing under a tent of sailcloth. In their embryo state "-of course it is impossible to tell which is which, but in a few days the coverings will be removed and the nondescripts will blossom forth as general s, colonels, captains, mule-drivers, chaplains and privates. In the meantime the dummy mules are boxed up in their crates and the horses stand in long rows, each with a fore foot lifted as if ready for a dash.