this process appear. "It is extremely difficult," remarks Mrs. Child, "to find such forfeits as are neither dangerous not unladylike." Judging by the samples given it would appear even more difficult to find any which could conceivably afford amusement either to performer or to onlooker. As a mere intellectual exercise, hockey is infinitely superior.

After Games, comes a section devoted -the differentiation is suggestive to Active Exercises, among which is ineluded Cup-and-Ball. In this division Mrs. Child-a born reformer-exhibits views of a daring kind. Under the head of Bow-and-Arrow, she remarks: "Of all things in the world, health is the most important. I fear our little girls do not take enough exercise in the open air." She proceeds to give a series of exercises, with and without apparatus, and describes them as "Calisthenic." "This hard name," she explains, "is given to a gentler sort of gymnastics suited to girls. The exercises have been very generally introduced into the schools of England. Many people think them dangerous because they confound them with the ruder and more daring gymnastics of boys; but such exercises are selected as are free from danger; and it is believed that they tend to produce vigorous muscles, graceful motion, and symmetry of form." Several of the exercises are illustrated, and No. 13 actually shows a short-waisted and shortsleeved young lady swinging on a horizontal bar, her minute feet well off the ground.

The fourteen pages devoted to Active Exercises are succeeded by ten dealing with Baskets, and twenty-one dealing with Ornaments. Here, then, we come to the "accomplishments" of the "older generations," the “elegant” and “ladylike" employments of those leisure hours which seem to have been so enviably numerous.

ECLECTIC. VOL. LXXIX.

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We begin with Moss baskets, made of cardboard, "neatly lined" and covered with bunches of dried moss, sewn or glued on. Imitation moss, we are instructed, may be made of worsted, knitted, "washed and dried by a gentle heat in order to keep it curled," then unravelled and sewn on in bunches. Mrs. Child reports that she has seen baskets of this kind with colored chalk eggs lying in them. "I thought them extremely pretty, but I should not have thought them so had they been real eggs stolen from a poor suffering bird." Alum baskets appear to be merely baskets of wicker or wire rendered ornamental-and useless-by being first wound round with worsted and then suspended in a jar containing saturated solution of alum. The alum, which may be previously colored, will form crystals all over the basket; and it is noted that "a group of crystals of different colors form a very pretty ornament for a chimney-piece. They must be made by suspending some rugged substance, such as a peach-stone, a half-burned stick, &c., in the boiling solution." Allspice baskets are to be composed of allspice berries, softened by soaking in brandy, and strung on slender wire "twisted into such a form as you please." "A gold bead between every two berries gives a rich appearance." One may venture to surmise that the soaking in brandy must also have given a rich and highly refined perfume. Bead baskets are to be made in a similar manner. Rice or shell baskets again demand a cardboard foundation papered over. This is to be "covered with grains of rice, bugles of different colors" (does the bugle, that elongated bead of our childhood, still exist?), "or very small delicate shells, put on with gum and arranged in such figures as suit your fancy." Of the Wafer basket the frame is once more made of cardboard "bound neatly at the edges with gilt

paper," a material copiously employed in the decorative labors of 1835. Having prepared the framework, "take the smallest wafers you can get," make them according to a prescribed method, into outstanding stars or rosettes, and "when you have enough prepared, wet the bottoms and fasten them on the basket in such forms as you please.

...

. . The handle may be decorated in the same manner as the basket," but "if it is likely to be handled much," Mrs. Child wisely advises that it should rather be ornamented with ribbon. This advice recalls the "filigree basket" manufactured by Miss Edgeworth's Rosamond as a birthday present for her cousin Bell, and the uneasiness of the maker when her father "rather roughly" took hold of the handle. "Starting off the coach seat, she cried, 'Oh, sir! father! sir! You will spoil it indeed,' said she with increased vehemence, when, after drawing aside the veil of silver paper, she saw him grasp the myrtle-wreathed handle. 'Indeed, sir, you will spoil the poor handle.' 'But what is the use of the poor handle,' said her father, 'if we are not to take hold of it? And pray,' continued he, turning the basket round with his finger and thumb, in rather a disrespectful manner, 'pray is this the thing you have been about, all this week? I have seen you, all this week, dabbing with paste and rags; I could not conceive what you were about. Is this the thing?"

Miss Edgeworth, it is to be feared, would have read with little respect the directions for basket-making in The Girl's Own Book. These are not yet exhausted. There are enumerated baskets of melon-seeds, of feathers, of cloves-on the pattern of the allspice basket-of straw, of lavender and most mysterious-of straw and "millinet"; these last being admittedly "fragile things intended rather for ornament than use." Finally there are

Paper-ball baskets and Paper-rosette baskets. Both belong to the favorite type; the cardboard frame, covered with paper and bound to taste with a gilt edging, being used as a background for gummed-on decorations. These decorations consist, in the latter case, of rosettes produced by artful folding of narrow strips of paper, and in the former of "little rolls of paper about as large as a quill and as long as your nail. . . . These little rolls are made to keep together by means of gum arabic. When of different colored paper and neatly made they are rather pretty." This description serves to elucidate a dark passage of Miss Austen's Sense and Sensibility, where Miss Lucy Steele is engaged like Rosamond in making a "filigree" basket, and Miss Elinor Dashwood helps her to "roll ber papers."

The elaborate construction of the paper-rosette basket forms the climax and conclusion of the article Baskets; and we pass on to Ornaments, reflecting, perhaps, as we turn the leaf, that not one of these baskets would serve to carry anything, that none of them would bear thoroughly washing, and that most of them seem especially designed for the collection of dust.

Among ornaments the first place is given to Imitation China. The requisites are "a prettily shaped tumbler of clear glass," an engraving to be colored "as much like china as you can," gold paper, and "gold paper edging." The engraving is fitted in to the tumbler, the necessary joins covered by a strip of gold paper, and a band of the same employed to cover the glass base of the tumbler, while gold paper binds together glass and paper at the top. A circle of white paper nicked like a jampot cover, is pressed into the bottom, and "when it is finished not one in a hundred could tell it from French china without close examination." To this art also Miss Austen makes allu

sion; the Misses Bennet, waiting in their aunt's drawing-room for the gentlemen to come in from the dinner-table, "had nothing to do but wish for an instrument and examine their own indifferent imitations of china on the mantel-piece." Let it not, however, be hastily supposed that such chimney ornaments served no purpose. Mrs. Child points out that they form "pretty receptacles" for "alumets." By the elegant name of "alumets" Mrs. Child denotes those "candle-lighters" or "spills" which Miss Matty, of Cranford, piqued herself upon making "of colored paper so as to resemble feathers." Mrs. Child, after candidly owning that "these colored papers are principally for show," instructs us how to produce amazing effects. "Two papers of different colors wound on the same stem, or gold paper and white paper wound together, are," she observes, "very beautiful." Having sufficiently adorned the parlor mantelpiece with "alumets" stuck into tumblers of imitation china, a young lady might turn her attention to making a straw cottage. She would run straws through a cardboard foundation, and through a roof of thick drawing-paper, and would gum flat straws upon this roof and its gable ends. Persons of enterprise might go so far as to construct "little temples, summer-houses and pagodas after a similar fashion, with round or six-sided roofs, and an acorn or some little ornament gummed upon the top." "A cottage looks pretty with very, very little artificial flowers introduced among the straws to imitate woodbine."

Passing by the manufacture of paper handscreens in which gold paper once more plays an important part-we come to paper cuttings. Paper is to be cut into the honeycomb pattern which some of us are old enough to remember as adorning fire-grates in remote country lodgings. Mrs. Child is of

opinion that "strips of light green paper cut in this way and hung in festoons about mirrors, pictures, entry lamps, &c., look very pretty." A variety of paper cutting produces candle ornaments-a kind of eight-petalled blossom with the candle as pistil. These may be dyed to "the bright green usually sold" or to a "fine yellow." Lacework cuttings are also recommended; made of tissue paper they may serve as "a very tasteful ornament for candlesticks," and their beauty will be "greatly increased by dipping into hot spermeceti." "Some people obtain glass dust from the glass-house and sprinkle it on while the spermaceti is warm. It looks very brilliant, but is apt to fall in a warm room." Quitting the subject of cut paper, we enter a region of science. We engrave eggshells by sketching on them with melted tallow and leaving the eggshell to soak in very strong vinegar until the acid eats away the ungreased surface; we make a leadtree, a tin-tree or a silver-tree by suspending zinc wire in the appropriate solution and suffering branching crystals to form themselves upon it as on a stem. The destination of these objects is not expressly mentioned, but no doubt they would find a resting-place upon some mantel-shelf. Various branches of artistic decoration close the section. There is Poonah painting, in which color is scrubbed on as dry as possible through the holes of a succession of paper stencil-plates; shadow landscapes, in which the light parts of a traced or copied picture are cut away and the paper then held up to the light; paper landscapes, in which the shadows are formed by varied thicknesses of stuck-on paper which exhibit gradations of shade when light shines through; and-horrible to relate -pomatum landscapes, in which a card is first spread with pomatum as a slice of bread with butter, then rubbed over with a coarse lead pencil, and finally

has the light parts of the intended landscape scraped away with a knife or needle. Whether this appalling production was to be hung on a wall is not explained. This series of landscapes is succeeded by a series of boxes-boxes of white wood whereon the background of some outline drawing is painted black to look "like ebony inlaid with ivory"; scrap boxes, stuck over with bits "cut from engravings" and afterwards highly varnished; boxes to the top of which engravings are transferred with inordinate pains and care, and an enormous expenditure of coats of varnish.

To the section Ornaments succeeds one even longer, dealing with puzzles, riddles, charades, &c., that would have delighted the heart of Harriet Smith; and after this we arrive at needlework. Here we feel how great is the change wrought by the sewing-machine. "Every little girl before she is twelve years old," we are told, "should know how to cut and make a shirt with perfect accuracy and neatness." In these days shirtmaking has passed entirely into the domain of commerce, and it may well be doubted whether the brother exists who would consent to wear a shirt manufactured at home by even the most accomplished of sisters. "At the infant schools in England," Mrs. Child assures us, "children of and four years old make miniature shirts about big enough for a large doll. . . . I have seen a small fine linen shirt made with crimson silk by an English child of five years old, and it was truly beautiful." One cannot help wondering how much of the bad eyesight now being observed and cared for may perhaps be due to the work at three, four, and five years old, of our grandmothers, upon "fine linen" shirts, with careful takings up of two threads and passings over of four threads.

three

Bags, reticules, purses, pin-cushions, and pen-wipers are next described in Longman's Magazine.

great variety, and sometimes in terms so mysterious that the natural curiosity of woman invites us to lay down the pen, seek needle, silk, ribbon, &c., and try, by experiment, to arrive at the meaning of these strange directions.

Articles follow about bees, silkworms, and gardening. These are chiefly remarkable for a singular absence of practical instruction. We are, indeed, told not to sprinkle the mulberry leaves upon which our silkworms are to be fed: but the whole duty of the young lady gardener would seem to lie in gathering seeds when ripe and dry: "doing up" these seeds in "strong paper carefully folded that they may not be spilt," and writing upon them "neatly" the name, season, and height of the plant.

The volume concludes with a couple of fables, a set of verses, and two stories, which were greatly beloved, many years ago by the present critic of "The Girl's Own Book," but which its second editor saw fit to eliminate from all late editions.

Can any person seriously regret that girls have dropped the "accomplishments" indicated by this excellently intended little book? Does not the heart sink at the accumulation of trumpery with which industrious girls may, under its guidance, have encumbered the houses of their parents or of their newly married husbands? Think of the little gimcrack baskets, the imitation china and "alumets," the paper foliage hanging round candlesticks and shedding glass-dust as the room grew warm, the engraved boxes, the mess of varnish and gold paper, the odious little "landscapes" that aimed at producing effects in any conceivable way other than that of learning to draw! We live, it may be, in an age of deteriorating manners, of slang, of games unfemininely rough: but at least we have escaped living in the age of filigree baskets.

Clementina Black.

It may seem whimsical to attribute a quality of original sin to the dictionary, but there is certainly some tendency in words, as there is in human nature, which makes for degeneracy. A word comes into the world, like the babe, in a state of innocence. Look at it after a few centuries, or even decades, and the chances are that you will find it coarsened, if not actually soiled. To take a very simple and obvious instance: one would say that "knowledge" was an idea so definite and excellent that it could not take on any unworthy significance. Yet to say that a person is "knowing" is not always an unadulterated compliment; it suggests wisdom plus certain other qualities which had no place in the original meaning. Still more sad is the case of the word "cunning," etymologically identical with "knowledge," and now so far removed from it that only the students of language know they are related. Think, too, of our forefathers' euphemism for a witch -"wise woman"-wise with the wisdom, as the "cunning" man is learned with the knowledge, of an inferior world to this.

The same debasing principle may be seen at work in such words as "notorious." Many living descendants of Mrs. Malaprop use the word as if it were a synonym of "notable," not detecting that the trail of the serpent is already over it. The word has not yet gone very far on the downward path-not so far, for instance, as "enormity"-but it has long since acquired the specific meaning of fame in the evil sense. You call an Anarchist notorious, but not an Archbishop. That the distinction was made in Shakespeare's time is plain from the fact

that he applies the epithet to "knave," "villain," "pirate," "liar," and other persons not admitted to polite society. Perhaps who knows?-it was he who gave it the first push on its downward career. It is only within recent times -probably since the arrival of musical comedy-that that push has been given to the word "suggestive." You may still speak with perfect correctness of a "suggestive" book or a "suggestive" sermon as one charged with thought; and yet when you speak of a "suggestive" play, it is not, as a rule, its intellectual quality to which you wish to call attention. If we are to argue from experience, we must conclude that some day the word will confine itself to that meaning exclusively, and we shall have to find some other term for purposes of encomium. It is merely by the differentiation of spelling-a modern innovation-that the word "holiday" has been saved from a similar, though not so sinister, doublemeaning. Probably 'Arry will disbelieve you if you tell him that his Bank Holiday was originally connected with religion; so wide has the gap become between "holiday" and "holy day." It is a typical instance of the family quarrels that occur among words. The reader who walks unwarily among writings of the elder time must be prepared for shocks. He may come across Beaumont and Fletcher's "white as the blooming hawthorn," or even Gascoigne's old hymn, "O Abraham's brats, O brood of blessed seed." Quite analogous is the change in the use of the word "imp." Did not Bacon's "Pathway unto Prayer" ask us to "pray for the preservation of the king's most excellent Majesty, and for the prosperous success of his entirely beloved son, Ed