JAMES'S AFTERNOON PARTY
"NOW are you ready to take in all the difficulties of my art object?"
asked Della.
"Trot her out," implored James.
"It's picture books."
A distinct sniff went over the assembly, only kept in check by a desire
to be polite.
"There can't be anything awfully new about picture books," said Tom.
"Especially cloth picture books. You and Helen have been cutting out
cambric for cloth picture books," accused Ethel Brown.
"Della has been making some variations, though." Helen came to Della's
rescue. "She's made some with the leaves all one color, pink or blue;
and here's another one with a variety--two pages light pink, and the
next two pages pale green."
Ethel Brown cast a more interested eye toward the picture book display.
"How do you sew them together?" she asked.
"You can do it on the machine and let it go at that. In fact, that's the
best plan even if you go on to add some decoration of feather-stitching
or cat-stitching. The machine stitching makes it firmer."
"Is there an interlining?"
"I tried them with and without an interlining. I don't think an
interlining is necessary. The two thicknesses of cambric are all you
need."
"Dicky has a cloth book with just one thickness for each page," said
Ethel Brown.
"But that's made of very heavy cotton," explained Helen.
"You cut your cambric like a sheet of note-paper," said Della.
"Haven't my lessons on scientific management soaked in better than
that?" demanded Roger. "If you want to save time you cut just as many
sheets of note-paper, so to speak, as your scissors will go through."
"Certainly," retorted Della with dignity. "I took it for granted that
the members of the U. S. C. had learned that. Put two sheets of this
cambric note-paper together flat and stitch them. That makes four pages
to paste on, you see. You can make your book any size you want to and
have just as many pages as you need to tell your story on."
"Story? What story?" asked Ethel Blue, interestedly.
"Aha! I thought you'd wake up!" laughed Della. "Here, my children, is
where my book differs from most of the cloth picture books that you ever
saw. My books aren't careless collections of pictures, with no relation
to each other. Here's a cat book, for instance. Not just every-day cats,
though I've put in lots of cats and some kodaks of my own cat. There are
pictures of the big cats--lions and tigers--and I've put in some scenery
so that the child who gets this book will have an idea of what sort of
country the beasts really live in."
"It's a natural history book," declared James.
"Partly. But it winds up with 'The True Story of Thomas's Nine Lives.'"
"The kid it is going to won't know English," objected Roger.
"Oh, I haven't written it out. It's just told in pictures with 1, 2, 3,
through 9 at the head of each page. They'll understand."
"Do you see what an opportunity the different colored cambric gives?"
said Helen. "Sometimes Della uses colored pictures or she paints them,
and then she makes the background harmonize with the coloring of the
figures."
"Why couldn't you make a whole book of my silhouettes?" demanded Ethel
Brown.
"Bully!" commended James.
"You can work out all sorts of topics in these books, you see," Della
went on. "There are all the fairy stories to illustrate and 'Red Riding
Hood,' and the 'Bears,' and when you get tired of making those you can
have one about 'The Wonders of America,' and put in Niagara."
"And the Rocky Mountains," said Tom.
"And the Woolworth Building," suggested Ethel Brown.
"And a cotton field with the negroes picking cotton," added Ethel Blue.
"There wouldn't be any trouble getting material for that one," said
Helen.
"Nor for one on any American city. I've got one started that is going to
show New York from the statue of Liberty to the Jumel Mansion and the
Van Cortland House, with a lot of other historical buildings and
skyscrapers and museums in between."
"We'll be promoting emigration from the old country after the war is
over if we show the youngsters all the attractions that Uncle Sam has
to offer."
"There'll be a lot of them come over anyway so they might as well learn
what they'll see when they arrive."
"I see heaps of opportunities in that idea," said Roger. "There's a
chance to teach the kiddies something by these books if we're careful to
be truthful in the pictures we put in."
"Not to make monkeys swinging down the forests of Broadway, eh?" laughed
Tom.
"If I'm to do a million or two of these you'll all have to help me get
the pictures together," begged James.
"I've brought some with me you can have for a starter," said Della, "and
I'm collecting others and keeping them in separate envelopes--animals in
one and buildings in another and so on. It will make it easier for you."
"_Muchas gracias, Senorita_," bowed James, who was just beginning
Spanish and liked to air a "Thank you" occasionally.
"I know what I'm going to make for some member of my family," declared
Roger.
"Name it, it will be such a surprise when it comes."
"Probably it will go to Grandmother Emerson so I don't mind telling you
that I think I'll write a history of our summer at Chautauqua and
illustrate it."
"That's the best notion that ever came from Roger," approved James. "I
think I'll make one and give it to Father. The Recognition Day
procession and all that, you know."
"Envelopes make me think that we may have some small gifts--cards or
handkerchiefs--that we can send in envelopes," said Ethel Blue, "and we
ought to decorate them just as much as our boxes."
"They won't be hard. Any of the ideas we've suggested for the boxes will
do--flowers and silhouettes, and seals. You're a smarty with watercolors
so you can paint some original figures or a tiny landscape, but the rest
of us will have to keep to the pastepot," laughed Margaret.
"For home gifts we can write rhymes to put into the envelopes, but I
suppose it wouldn't do for these European kids," said Tom. "We don't
know where they're going, you see, and it would never do if an English
child got a German rhyme or the other way round."
"O-oh, ne-_ver_," gasped Ethel Blue whose quick imagination sympathized
with the feelings of a child to whom such a thing happened. "We'll have
to make them understand through their eyes."
"Fortunately Santa Claus with his pack speaks a language they can all
understand," nodded Roger.
"Here comes his humble servant right now," exclaimed Mrs. Hancock at the
door.
Tom ran to hold it open for her, and Roger relieved her of the waiter
which she was carrying.
"James has to have an egg-nog at this time," she explained, "so I
thought all of you might like to be 'picked up' after your hard
afternoon's work."
These sentiments were greeted with applause though Tom insisted that the
best part of the afternoon was yet to come as he had not yet had a
chance to tell about his invention.
"One that you'll appreciate tremendously, Mrs. Hancock," he said
gravely. "All housekeepers will. You must get Margaret to make you
one."
"Don't tell her what it is and I can give it to her for Christmas,"
cried Margaret.
James's egg-nog and his wafers were placed on the table beside him. The
others sat at small tables, of which there were several around the room,
and drank their egg-nog and ate their cakes with great satisfaction.
"Tell me how this egg-nog is made," begged Helen. "It is delicious and
I'm sure Mother would like to know."
"Mother always has it made the same way," replied Margaret. "I'm sure it
is concocted out of six eggs and half a pound of sugar, and three pints
of whipped cream and a dash of cinnamon and nutmeg."
"It's so foamy--that isn't the whipped cream alone."
"First you beat the yolks of the eggs and the sugar together until it is
all frothy. Then you beat the whites of the eggs by themselves until
they are stiff and you stir that in gently. Then you put the spice on
top of that and lastly you heap the whipped cream on top of the whole
thing."
"It's perfectly delicious," exclaimed Dorothy, "and so is the fruit
cake."
"Mother prides herself on her fruit cake. It is good, isn't it? She's
going to let me make some to send to the orphans."
"Won't that be great. Baked in ducky little pans like these."
"They'll keep perfectly, of course."
"Would your mother let us have the receipt now so we could be practicing
it to make some too?" asked Dorothy.
"I'm sure she'd be delighted," and Margaret ran off to get her mother's
manuscript cook book from which Dorothy copied the following receipt:
"Fruit Cake
"1/2 cup butter
3/4 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup raisins, chopped
3/4 cup currants
1/2 cup citron, cut in small pieces
1/2 cup molasses
2 eggs
1/2 cup milk
2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon allspice
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon cloves
1/2 teaspoon lemon extract or vanilla
"Sift the flour, soda and spices together. Beat the eggs, add the milk
to them. Cream the butter, add the sugar gradually, add the molasses,
the milk and egg, then the flour gradually. Mix the fruit, sift a little
flour over it, rub it in the flour, add to it the mixture. Add the
extract. Stir and beat well. Fill greased pans two-thirds full. Bake in
a moderately hot oven one and a quarter hours if in a loaf. In small
sizes bake slowly twenty to thirty minutes."
"I'm ready to hear what Tom's got to offer," said James, leaning back
luxuriously in his chair after the remains of the feast had been taken
away.
"Mine is a paper-cutting scheme," responded Tom. "Perhaps it won't come
easy to everybody, but on a small scale I'm something of a paper cutter
myself."
"Dull edged?" queried Roger.
"Hm," acknowledged Tom. "I can't illustrate 'Cinderella' like the man
Della saw, but I can cut simple figures and I want to propose one
arrangement of them to this august body."
"Fire ahead," came Roger's permission.
"It's just a variation of the strings of paper dolls that I used to make
for Della when she was a year or two younger than she is now."
Della received this taunt with a puckered face.
[Illustration: "Fold strips of paper and then cut one figure of a little
girl"]
"You fold strips of white paper--or blue or yellow or any old color--in
halves and then in halves again and then again, until it is about three
inches wide. Then you cut one figure of a little girl, letting the tips
of the hands and skirts remain uncut. When you unfold the strip you have
a string of cutey little girls joining hands. See?"
They all laughed for all of them had cut just such figures when they
were children.
"Now my application of this simple device," went on Tom in the solemn
tones of a professor, "is to make them serve as lamp shades."
"For the orphans?" laughed Roger.
"For the orphans I'm going to cut about a bushel of strips of all
colors. Children always like to play with them just so."
"I don't see why those of us who can't draw couldn't cut a child or a
dog or some figure from a magazine and lay it on the folded paper and
trace around the edges and then cut it," suggested Dorothy.
[Illustration: A String of Paper Dolls]
"You could perfectly well. All you have to remember is to leave a folded
edge at the side, top and bottom. You can make a row of dogs standing on
their hind paws and holding hands--forepaws--and the ground they are
standing on will fasten them together at the bottom."
"How does the lamp shade idea work out?" asked Helen with Grandfather
Emerson's Christmas gift in mind.
"You cut a string of figures that are fairly straight up and down, like
Greek maidens or some conventional vases or a dance of clowns. Then you
must be sure that your strip is long enough to go around your shade.
Then you line it with asbestos paper--the kind that comes in a sort of
book for the kitchen."
"I see. You paste the strip right on to the asbestos paper and cut out
the figures," guessed James.
"Exactly," replied Tom. "After which you paste the ends of the strip
together and there you have your shade ready to slip on to the glass."
[Illustration: Photograph Frame--front]
"What keeps it from falling down and off?"
"The shape of the shade usually holds it up. If it isn't the right
shape, though, you can run a cord through your figures' hands and
tighten them up as much as you need to."
"I think that's a rather jolly stunt of Tom's," commended Roger
patronizingly. Tom gave him a kick under the table and James growled a
request not to hit his game leg.
[Illustration: Photograph Frame--back]
"If you boys are beginning to quarrel it's time we adjourned," decided
the president. "Has anybody any more ideas to get off her alleged mind
this afternoon?"
"I thought of picture frames," offered James.
"While my hand is in with pasting I believe I'll make some frames--a
solid pasteboard back and the front with an oval or an oblong or a
square cut out of it. You paste the front on to the back at the edges
except at the bottom. You leave that open to put the picture in."
"You can cover that with chintz--cotton, cotton, cotton," chanted
Dorothy, who seldom missed a chance to promote the cotton crusade.
"How do you hang it up?" asked Margaret.
"Stick on a little brass ring with a bit of tape. Or you can make it
stand by putting a stiff bit of cardboard behind it with a tape hinge."
"That would be a good home present," said Ethel Brown.
"Perfectly good for family photographs. You can make them hold two or
three. But you can fix them up for the European kids and put in any sort
of picture--a dog or a cat or George Washington or some really beautiful
picture."
"I believe in giving them pictures of America or American objects or
places or people," said Dorothy.
"Dorothy is the champion patriot of the United Service Club," laughed
Roger. "Come on, infants; we must let James rest or Mrs. Hancock won't
invite us to come again. I wish you could get over to Rosemont for the
movies next week," he added.
"What movies?"
"The churches have clubbed together and hired the school hall and
they're going to get the latest moving pictures from the war zone that
they can find. It is the first time Rosemont has ever had the real
thing."