going into the country for the summer had better supply herself with a
number of these, with handles, from the florist or the basket-maker.
If she gets a tin pan also fitted in cunningly, she has the loveliest
table ornamentation all ready. Her buffets, her parlor-table, her
piano, her brackets can all hold these pleasant things, for which no
money need be paid, but which have a value far above money. Never give
these baskets a heavy, packed look, but allow plenty of the rich green
leaves of the rose to set them off. It seems to us that ladies might
create an endless succession of Home Amusements by studying how to vary
the effect of their vases and baskets of flowers.
A simple bunch of yellow buttercups in the early spring will make a
purple room perfectly beautiful; and dandelions can be massed with
great effect. Yellow flowers are rare, but necessary to produce
fine contrasts of color. We all tend too much to the red and white
easily-obtained effects. They are poor compared with what we can do.
If Fashion has rather run its worship of the daisy into the ground,
Fashion might have done a worse thing. We can scarcely blame Fashion
for going back to this impressive flower, which in its simplicity has
moved all philosophers, poets, and fortune-tellers to admire and study
it.
It seems to us that something more cheerful than our usual Christmas
decorations could be invented. We make them too somber. Try mixing in
the beautiful bitter-sweet berries, which are so very easily obtained,
and which keep all winter. The holly is not so common with us as in
England; still, many a New England swamp produces a host of hips and
haws and red berries.
The business of preserving autumn-leaves shows ten failures to one
success. Yet, when autumn leaves are well preserved, they are very
charming means of winter decoration. They are luminous at evening,
and, mixed with ferns and grasses, are perpetual bouquets. But do not
varnish them: that gives them a waxy effect, which is detestable. Press
them carefully, and iron them under a piece of brown paper. That seems
to preserve the color.
Grasses, on the contrary, and a thousand pods and seed-vessels, grains
and cat-tails, and certain weeds, dry into beautiful colors and make
most wonderful groups for the parlor mantel. The young ladies of our
vast continent can not do a better thing than to each year add to these
beautiful and most graceful bouquets, which retain, like the fabled
Dryads, all the fascination of Nature, even when they have passed into
sticks and dry leaves.
XIV.
CAGED BIRDS AND AVIARIES.
From flowers to birds is a natural transition, and we enter upon that
part of Home Amusement which centers around a cage of singing-birds.
It is a dreadful thing to snare and to imprison an innocent bird;
therefore we begin with that bird which seems to take most kindly to
captivity--the canary.
Travelers tell us that this yellow darling has gray plumage at home;
but as we know them they are generally yellow, white, green, or brown.
Climate, food, and intermixture of breeds has, no doubt, to do with
this. The canary, which in France is nearly white, at Teneriffe is as
brown as a berry. We can not tell why they are always yellow in cages.
The exact date of the introduction of the canary is not known to us. In
1610 the bird was considered a great rarity. According to some authors,
the island of Elba was the first European ground on which the canary
found a resting-place for its tiny foot. A ship bound for Leghorn,
they say, having on board a number of sweet songsters, foundered near
this island, on which the birds, set at liberty by the accident,
found a refuge; and the climate was so congenial to their nature that
they remained and bred, and would probably have remained there had
not their unlucky, fatal gifts of beauty and song betrayed them to
the bird-catchers, who hunted them so assiduously that not a single
specimen was left on the island. From Italy these birds soon found
their way into France and Germany, from the latter of which countries
and the Tyrol we now receive our best supplies. Canary breeding and
teaching is conducted in the Tyrol on a large scale, and these trainers
have the power always to obtain large prices for their birds. Canary
societies exist in England, and small traders, like Poll Sneedlepipes,
compete for prizes.
Canary critics recognize two varieties--two grand divisions--in fancy
canaries: “gay birds,” or “gay spangles,” and fancy, or “mealy,”
birds--the first being plain, like the original stock, and the last
variegated. This also includes the _Jonques_, or _Jonquils_, as the
yellow birds are technically called. The varieties of these two grand
divisions are almost innumerable, nearly every year producing a new
one, which, like a prize flower, is in high favor until superseded by a
greater beauty. Every year has its fashionable bird, its professional
beauty, its Mrs. Langtry, until some Mrs. Cornwallis West or Lady
Lonsdale carries off the palm. Like all hobbies, this is a hobby
desperately ridden. It is a “Dutch taste for tulips,” and immense
prices are given for prize canaries, even by men who can not afford to
speculate in such very uncertain stock.
There are certain standard properties which are always considered
essential toward gaining a prize. The first property considered in the
show bird is the “cap,” which must be of a good gold color. The next
is purity of color through the whole bird. Then the wings and tail,
which must be black quite home to the quill. The fourth relates to
the spangle, which must be distinct. Fifth, size and shape. Besides
these properties there are what are called “additional beauties,” not
essential to the winning of a prize, but adding to a bird’s chances.
These are five in number: pinions, for size and regularity; swallow and
throat, for size; fair breast, for regularity; legs and flight, for
blackness. In explanation of this it may be noted that from the beak to
the back of the neck is called the “cap,” and this should be of a clear
orange-color, full and rich in the ground, and with black edges to the
feathers. The feathers on the loins, or the _saddle_ as it is sometimes
called, as well as those of the breast, must be free from black, while
the wings must have no admixture of any other color. No bird can fairly
compete for a prize which has not black on the stock or neb of the
back, flight, or tail feathers, or that has less than eighteen flying
feathers in each wing or less than twelve in the tail. Such, lady
bird-fanciers, is a prize canary in England!
Holborn is the great canary mart. In St. Andrew’s Street every third or
fourth house is occupied by a dealer, and those who desire to possess
a first-rate singer should visit that street. It is best to go by
gaslight, when all the birds are on the twitter.
Now, in America we have the plain yellow bird, with no admixture of
black; and yet the same conditions seem to be observed as to his
treatment. Sacrifice the beauty of your bird to his song, which is
his chief accomplishment. He should have a comfortable mahogany cage,
and be allowed to step into it of his own accord. It should be well
furnished with seed and water. Place a light in front of the cage, and
he will begin to sing. A single hemp-seed or a morsel of chickweed will
induce the little prisoner to sing almost immediately. They are very
amiable and happy in captivity.
The blackcap, called the “mock-nightingale,” is a very charming
household pet, if he will live. His power of song is almost equal to
that of the nightingale. He is sometimes called “the English
mocking-bird,” and he imitates any songster whom he may hear--blackbird,
thrush, or meadow-lark. They are by no means plentiful birds, and they
bring a good price in the market. They are about the same size as
the linnet, and the prevailing colors of the plumage are ashen-gray
and olive-green. The old birds feed their young on caterpillars,
moths, and other insects. They can be reared, however, on bread and
milk. If brought up with a canary or a nightingale, they will acquire
a beautiful song composed of their own natural notes and those of
these brilliant performers. This bird has been known to live twelve
or sixteen years in confinement. It demands some sort of fruit, like
cherries, currants, or raspberries in summer; a bit of apple, pine, or
orange in winter. To keep it in perfect health, it must have an iron
nail in its cup of water.
But _chacun à son goût_. Every lady has her preferences as to her
feathered favorites. Suffice it to say a few words as to the care of
these poor little creatures.
Birds are naturally tender things. They are not born to live in cages;
therefore they should be especially cared for. Domestic pets are apt to
come to untimely ends, particularly if left to the care of servants,
who regard them as a burden and a nuisance, and too often cruelly
neglect them. Birds in captivity are very liable to diseases which do
not attack them in their wild state; and in the various casualties
which endanger their prison life, their owners should seek to protect
them and to cure them. Let it be one of the Home Amusements for the
lady to feed her pet canary--to clean its cage, or see that it is done.
We have seen a little boy of seven take such care of his pet canary
that he shamed all the older people in the house; and a happier bird
never lived.
If you keep but one bird in a cage in very hot weather, his cage should
be cleansed once a day. If you minister personally to the comfort of
your bird, he will grow very much attached to you. If the perches are
not kept clean, the birds become afflicted with the gout and other
maladies, resulting in the loss of toes.
Wooden cages, especially of mahogany, are the best, as they are less
likely to harbor insects. If of fir or soft wood, the cage should be
painted green. The wires of a cage should never be painted, as the
wire being non-absorbent, the bird pecks off and eats the paint, which
poisons it. Japanned zinc cages are very well. A cage should not be too
open. There should always be a snug corner or sheltered place, where
the bird can retire and shun observation. It is great cruelty to hang
a cage in the sun unprotected. Remember that in their free state birds
seek the shady tree. In a shower always bring your birds indoors, for
they are apt to take cold if wet in an imprisoned state.
It is a pity that more of our country residents have not the idea of an
aviary. It is so very pretty--an abiding-place of beauty, love, song,
and happiness. Surely it does not cost so much as a greenhouse.
The model aviary is built of brick or stone, iron and glass, with a
stove and pipes fitted to keep it of an even temperature all winter.
The floor should be an earthen one, beaten hard, like the floors of
some barns. Bricks are too cold. Planks harbor insects, retain bad
smells, and form coverts for rats and mice. The roof of the aviary
should be semicircular or shelving, with vines and flowing creepers
trailing over it, so that there shall be a rustle of green leaves
steeped in sunshine, and air laden with sweet perfume to delight the
birds within. There should be also creepers and shrubs growing inside
for the birds to nest in. Perches and wicker baskets with horse-hair
and wool should be left around, and there should be a small marble
basin and fountain in the middle, of which the water should be always
fresh and changing for the birds to drink. This is, of course, a
very magnificent aviary, costing money. But what an addition to Home
Amusements to care for the happy family within! The birds can be of
all sorts. At the period of migration--about the last of August--all
birds kept in confinement show a great desire to get out, and often
beat themselves to death against the walls of their cages. In this
time of ardent enterprise the top of the aviary or the cages should be
covered with dark cloth, and the poor things shut out from the light.
A much cheaper aviary is built in the form of a large cage on the
top of a tree, with open exit and entrances, fitted up with every
convenience of bird-furnishing, and visited twice a day by the boys of
the family. Here many birds come to lodge and get tamed, as the Indian
does by having a house and garden, and often one pair of birds comes
back several times. This is a charming sort of aviary, and very much
to be commended. What romantic tales of a wayside inn do the robin
redbreasts and orioles tell the peeping boy as he goes up the ladder to
feed his familiar friends! It is the prettiest sort of correspondence
with _l’inconnu_!
It is a curious thing that the lungs of birds in captivity always
suffer from impurity of air, especially when the temperature is at all
varied; this must be one of the points very carefully attended to.
For food--we now are getting to a very creepy stage of our
narrative--meal-worms, ugh! are the _pièce de résistance_; but
canaries, goldfinches, bullfinches, linnets--all, God bless
them!--prefer seed; while chaffinches, buntings, and the whole tit
family and larks must have seeds, insects, and fat meat--namely, worms.
The nightingales, thrushes, redbreasts, blackcaps, must have worms,
crickets, cockroaches, and ant-eggs. The maggots of the blow-fly
and all such tidbits, meal-worms, and flesh-maggots must be kept in
reserve; and this kind of housekeeping is apt to shock the delicate
sense. Let the boys of the family attend to this part of the birds’
diet. Boiled cabbage, green peas, all sorts of pudding, dry bread, and
a little finely minced cooked meat, bread-crumbs mashed up and scalded
in milk, milk itself, hemp-seed, a little chickweed, lettuce, and
cresses, can be given to birds with advantage.
The bathing of birds must be done with great skill and wisdom. After
the operation of a warm bath, with soap, which should be given to
nestlings who are troubled with vermin, great care must be taken that
they are not chilled, as death will be the result. Wrap them up, like
little babies, in flannel.
In teaching them to sing, the voice, the piano, and flute are all good
teachers. The patient and music-loving Germans teach all birds to sing.
It should be begun in the morning early, when the bird is hungry; and
his lesson should not last more than an hour.
Early and regular attendance, gentleness and kindness, are the
_rationale_ of bird-tending, as of nearly everything else!
Those half-captives, the pigeons, should be around every country house.
How beautiful they are in Venice! the pigeons of St. Mark, which have
swooped about that storied piazza for so many years, because regularly
fed there. All boys should learn to cultivate them; to have the lovely
shifting luster of their necks lighting up the ground and making gay
the twilight. How proud and pompous are the pouters! how gentle the
ringdoves! and how pretty the whole family! Peacocks are very stately
visitors, and, except for their horrid shrieks, are especially to be
commended. The old ruffled turkey-gobbler has his charms; and the pages
of Hawthorne teach us how very amusing a group of hens and chickens
may become. We advise every family to have as many birds as they can
possibly feed; for every bird is a study, from the blink-eyed owl which
hides in the fir-tree, to the poor old goose that quacks and hobbles
toward the pond. Indeed, the æsthetics are all pretending that the
goose is the most beautiful of them all!--a perfect love, a type, is
a goose, since Walter Crane and Kate Greenaway came in. But we still
prefer the stately swan, of which splendid specimens are now beginning
to add their attractions to our inland lakes. The goose is all very
well in her way, but the swan is better.
XV.
PICNICS.
Perhaps it is not well to class among Home Amusements a series of
entertainments which imply, at first sight, the getting away from home.
But, as the basket of luncheon has to be packed at home, and the best
part of a picnic is the getting home again, we must be permitted a
divergence.
It is curious to see how emphatically fond of picnics the Americans
are. A universal national hunger seems to seize the tired cit as the
first warm day of May beams upon us. They “babble of green fields.”
Best of all charities those which send the poor children off, on boats
and trains, for a whiff of pure air! It is the blessed privilege of the
rich to thin out the crowded tenement, and to send the overplus of an
irrepressible civilization back to Nature for a moment.
But, for a Home Amusement in the country, what can compare with the joy
of getting ready for a picnic? The baskets for the provisions (and be
sure, Mary, not to forget the salt or the sugar), the coffee-pot that
will stand being poked down into the wood-coals, the fine old swinging
iron kettle, the bread, the knives, and the pail of ice. Ah!
Then, as to carriages. Not the luxurious cushioned barouche, but the
shabbiest old rattletraps about the place are the proper ones. A good
old hay-wagon is the very best--if it have hay in it. It may do very
well at Newport for the luxurious to drive out to one of Mr. Bennett’s
picnics in a four-in-hand or a drag, or a Victoria or a barouche; but
in the country take the buckboard, the old Rockaway wagon, which holds
nine--the more the merrier--the farm-wagon, and the market-cart. Filled
with youth, beauty, and jollity, these become the chariots of Apollo.
It is not always easy to get mamma to a picnic; but it is good for
her, and for all the others, if she will go. She is apt to be anxious
about rain, and is afraid of farmer Bell’s bull; and she should be
allowed to go in an easy carriage. She also fears to take cold, and is
mightily frightened at those crazy boats on the lake. But it is better
for all parties if these fears are assuaged and she really goes. The
change does her good, and she acts as a temporary restraint on the too
volatile spirits of the party.
Another power hard to coerce is Statira, who is the head of the
commissary department. Statira, cook and factotum, was brought up on
the wrong side of a mullein-patch herself, and she is not in love
with the country. She remembers the woods as a place where she went
to look, in her youth, for recalcitrant cows; and in winter, how cold
and bleak the woods were! Her present warm and cultivated kitchen,
with stationary wash-tubs, is to her a far more agreeable spot. She
hesitates, as the young people ask for her delicate apple-pies and her
delicious cakes, “to cram into baskets,” to “eat out in the pasture,”
as she sniffingly avers.
However, although Statira is a greater tyrant than Nero, the young
people prevail, and the picnic gets started somehow. What a jolly hour
is passed in driving through the still valley to the brow of yonder
hill, which commands a view of the whole country! Then Susan, the
thoughtful one, dreads lest the coffee-pot has been forgotten. Hurried
search! The coffee-pot is found under a back seat. Happiness restored,
the songs go on, and the murmuring pines and the hemlocks take up the
wondrous tale.
Then the party arrive at the lake. The girls take off their hats. The
winds play with the “tangles in Nerea’s hair.” The picnic is a nice
opportunity for a pretty foot, a fine figure, and a splendid head of
hair--so it is said. Then come rambles into the forest.
That is a pretty story of a nymph who appeared on the edge of a forest,
but who disappeared as she was followed, until, at last, as her lover
pursued her farther into the forest, he threw his arms about a white
hawthorn-tree. It is the world’s earliest romance that the first
courtship took place at a picnic. Roses and briers twine around lovers
for ever, and the lotus and the buttercup tell the same story.
Picnics are healthy; but should be appropriately dressed. Balmoral
boots, broad hats, and flannel dresses, warm, plain, and serviceable.
A white Marseilles which will wash--percales and cambrics and ginghams
will do; but no finery should be allowed. At Newport one may try the
Watteau combination of brocade and satin, with fine old house, grounds,
and trellised arcades. But at a country picnic Watteau dresses are
out of place. Our climate is too fitful for safe picnicking, as we
dread rain. In England they do not care, but lunch at Ascot, with the
rain pouring into the champagne. But here we need to go prepared with
aquiscutums and umbrellas, and a neighboring barn is well in the near
distance.
It is a common want, this need of the confessional of Nature. We leave
our morbid fancies, our discontents, in the bosom of our dear common
mother, and we come back as cheerful as is the dappled deer. We like to
go back to that idyllic spot where the race started.
In the spring certain natures get frisky, like the colts. One pasture
will not hold them. We get tired of white man’s work. It was a true
reading of the human heart which made the Greeks place Apollo with
the shepherds of Admetus, and Jove stooping to the people of the
hill-sides. “The populous all-loving solitude” of Nature draws us with
a potent hand. Our houses are a false shell. Titania’s subjects will
rebel. That rural solitude, which has no conventionality; that desert
rock, against which the noisy wave of human folly breaks itself; the
dense forest, where is sung the mighty hymn of the pines; the brow of
the hill which the sun kisses last; the lone seashore; the distant
heath; that cloud-shadow on the mountain--these are all necessary to
us once a year. We must go once to “_La roche qui pleure_.” We must go
where the forest-growths expand in all their strength and splendor. We
must find the shyest wild flower, the most untamable vine. It is in the
fable of Daphne that we read the deep significance, the poetry, the
true meaning of our love of the picnic.
Who of us--comfortable and well housed--but has in some moment of
nomadic instinct envied the tramp and the gypsy their life of chapleted
ease, as they lie on the greensward, hugging dear mother Nature
to their very bosoms? Who has not some wild, untamed blood in his
veins--some fellowship for the Indian--some desire for the flitting
caress of the passing breeze, or the somber greeting of the mountain
shadow?
But no more poetry, if you please. We are getting hungry. Where are
those baskets? Ah! the cold roast beef, the wing of a chicken, and the
salt, not forgotten!
Those hard-boiled eggs--how good they are! So glad that chicken-raising
has been one of our Home Amusements! Just a high picket-fence, a few
good hens, some boxes, and a little attention, and what eggs these
are! Mamma will not, however, eat them; she says they are unwholesome.
But she takes a piece of the breast of a noble pullet, and a cup of
coffee in a tin mug, made by Sam, best of cooks, amateur--college-bred
cook--who has boiled it under the trees! and laid the grounds with a
dash of cold water. Sam puts his own clearness and strength into the
coffee.
And now for an hour’s reverie by the side of the lake; and then a
rough-and-tumble drive home! How tired, ragged, jagged, disheveled, and
happy we are as we get home!
Statira has built a splendid wood-fire for us, and has a supper of
broiled chicken, cold ham, preserves and cream, baked potatoes, and
toast, and hot biscuits which might tempt the virtue of an anchorite.
We have no such proud resistance. We have brought an appetite from the
place where they make them; and we can eat hot biscuits and still wrap
the drapery of our couch about us and lie down to pleasant dreams.
A picnic is, therefore, a Home Amusement. It has home at both ends;
else it would not be a picnic.
XVI.
PLAYING WITH FIRE. CERAMICS.
Now let us ascend from these trivialities to the consideration of the
great subject which has been more talked of and dabbled in for the
last seven years than any accomplishment ever was, before or since.
The splendid display of Ceramic Art at our great Exposition of 1876 no
doubt had its share in creating that intense interest in the subject
which has been felt everywhere.
How it came into the category of Home Amusements we hardly know, unless
the art schools stimulated the pursuit. But now we do know that nearly
every lady paints a plate, from grandma down to the smallest child.
Especially has it become the pastime of middle-aged ladies, who have
got through with the work of life, and have much leisure on their
hands. It is one of the many accomplishments which has taken the place
of the German wool worsted abomination, the canvas roses, and counted
out violets.