THE ideas included in this book have been collected during a number of years of work among boys. During these years the writer has discovered that a great many of the articles usually described for boys to make are very often impractical on account of the small size of the boy's pocketbook. All of those described in this book can be made from things picked up around the house, at no expense to the maker, while almost all of the toys are constructed with an ordinary cigar box as a base.

Everything described does some work or performs some peculiar function, a thing which has made the ideas of particular value to manual training schools.

The author wishes to thank the boys who have worked with him in the past for their share in the inspiration of this volume, and offers it to other boys of America in the hope that they may obtain from its pages an enjoyment equal to that he has had in its preparation.

It's easy to make things if you just will think and take pains. There is hardly any kind of a toy that you cannot make out of odds and ends you pick up around the house, if you will just use some ingenuity in putting the parts together.

Ideas are what the world pays for. Learn to get up ideas, and those of you young fellows, and smaller boys too, who start now to make things and to learn how to put parts together to get the result you want, are building the basis of business success.

There is too much old stuff in our ways of learning. The boy of to-day is more ingenious than his father, and is more handy at analyzing mechanical things. Give a boy a knife and some spools and a piece of tin, and he will make anything from a submarine to a flying machine, and the thing he makes will work when it is done. Many older men, by neglecting their mechanical instincts, have killed these possibilities in themselves.

Give the real boy some tools and a workshop, and half the problem of bringing up the next generation is solved.

The toys in this volume range from the submarine to a talking machine that talks, a grain elevator, a siren whistle, animals that move, musical instruments, etc. These toys can all be made with very few tools. The boys who read this and expect to make the things hereafter described should begin to save up odds and ends.

Every toy described will work if the directions are carefully followed, for the author has himself made all of them and has proved them to be successful.

If you want some fun the next time you go down to the lake, take some cigar-box wood and make a mechanical duck.