Punchinello
The Punch and Judy idea is over two thousand years old. The Celestial Emperor Kao Tsu (206 B.C.) was shut up in the City of Peh-têng by an army of barbarous Huns. “With his Majesty was a statesman, Ch’ ên P’ing, who, happening to know that the wife of the besieging chieftain was a very jealous woman, devised a scheme. He caused the portrait of a very beautiful girl to be forwarded to her, with a message that if her husband would permit the emperor to go forth unharmed, the young lady should become his property. The chieftain’s wife never mentioned the portrait to her husband, but at once began to persuade him to raise the siege, which, in fact, he would have done forthwith had he not been privately informed of the picture and warned at the same time that the whole affair was simply a ruse. Thereupon he sent to say that it would be necessary for him first of all to have a glimpse of this beauty in the flesh; and later on he repaired by agreement to the foot of the city wall, where he beheld the young lady moving about and surrounded by a number of attendants. His suspicions being thus allayed, he gave orders to open a passage through his lines to the Emperor Kao Tsu and suite, who promptly made the best of their way out. At the same time the Hun chieftain entered the city and proceeded to the spot on the wall where the young lady was awaiting him, still surrounded by her handmaids; but on arriving there he found that the beauty and her attendants were simply a set of wooden puppets which had been dressed up for the occasion and were worked by a concealed arrangement of springs.