Perhaps some of you would like to know how to make pretty scrap-books,
either for your own pleasure or to give to little friends. These
scrap-books are sources of enjoyment to children who have been ill and
are getting stronger--who are what we call convalescent--and some of us
know crippled children, or even grown people, who are shut in from busy
life by weakness or disease. We ought to try to brighten their lives if
we can. Gather together all the illustrated newspapers and books with
pictures that you can command. Black and white pictures are as good as
colored, and the two look well together. Cut these out neatly and
carefully, with smooth edges. Torn and worn-out picture-books usually
have something left which will do to cut out, and be thus saved from
being wholly lost. Then there are the Christmas, New-Year, and birthday
cards, of which nearly all of us have some. Take for the pages of your
book, paper, muslin, or common glazed cambric; cut this into pieces ten
inches long and eight inches wide. Three or four pages will make a book
large enough to begin with. The cambric may be all white, or any color
you prefer--pink, blue, red, or a part of each color. On these pages
paste the pictures neatly on both sides, using your taste as to which
pictures look well together and fit in nicely. The covers may be made of
the cambric, neatly lined; but if you aim at durability, take light
pasteboard covered on both sides with cambric, and sewed together over
and over, or what is better, in button-hole stitch in colored worsted.
Then with the scissors make holes through all, and tie the covers and
pages together with a narrow ribbon or twisted worsted.
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We are sure that none of you who can play and sing will neglect to learn
the beautiful melody which we give you in this week's Post-office Box.
We shall think we hear you singing it as we follow the paper in its
flight over land and sea to the thousands of homes where little hands
are outreached to welcome its arrival.
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Here is a bit of wise counsel from Charles Kingsley about the best way
to study history:
"If you would understand history, you must first try to understand
men and women. For history is the history of men and women, nothing
else; and she who knows men and women thoroughly will best
understand the past work of the world, and be best able to take a
share in its work now.... If, therefore, any of you ask me how to
study history, I should answer: 'Take, by all means,
biographies--wheresoever possible, autobiographies--and study them.
Fill your mind with live human figures, people of like passions
with yourselves; see how they lived and worked in the time and
place in which God put them.' Believe me that when you have thus
made a friend of the dead, and brought them to life again, and let
them teach you to see with their eyes and feel with their hearts,
you will begin to understand more of their generation and their
circumstances than all the mere history books of the period would
teach you."
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A. C.--St. Mary's Free Hospital is an Episcopal institution. We can not
answer your first question.
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We offer the C. Y. P. R. U. this week a variety of articles from which to
choose. Mr. James Payn begins another of his thrilling stories of "Peril
and Privation" on the great deep; the presence of mind and courage shown
by little Alice Ivy will appeal to readers of all ages; Mr. Allan Forman
gives us a glimpse into ornithology in his amusing article on "Mr.
Thompson and the Bird with a Lantern"; and there is no small amount of
information in regard to natural history to be gleaned from Mr. J. C.
Beard's article on "Mr. Barnum's Show in Winter-Quarters." Capital
entertainment for long evenings will be found in the game of "Nine Men's
Morris," which Mr. James Otis gives us full and clear directions how to
play.
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