cloth or tissue-paper) then cover the sides with strips 
of tissue-paper. Double the strips (which should he 
about two inches wide) twice, cut it across the strips 
very fine, leaving about, one-eighth ot an inch with¬ 
out being cut to sew it on. After it. is cut fine crimp 
with a pair of scissors. Put a strip of white crimped 
paper at the bottom, and a strip of green above it, 
and a strip of white at the top. Hang it up by bright 
cords. Put green moss in the basket, and take ever¬ 
green vines from the woods, put them in a warm 
oven a few minutes to dry, and then twine them 
around the basket and over the top. Put a few r pa¬ 
per flowers or everlastings in the top of the basket 
among the vines. 
For the shelves of a whatnot, the pieces that come 
out of the heads of flour-barrels are very good, and by 
boring holes in the ends and slipping cords through 
and stringing spools on the cords between the shelves, 
and tacking pasteboard with burrs sewed on at the 
edges, no one would guess where the shelves came 
from. 
A pretty rug can be made by using pieces of flan¬ 
nel and worsted and cutting them oval-shape, about 
two and one-half inches long and about one and 
one half inches wide in the widest place. Double 
the pieces lengthwise, and with a coarse thread ga¬ 
ther it around the edge that is cut and fasten well. 
Cut a piece of coarse cloth the size and shape you 
want the rug, sew the pieces on by commencing at 
the outside. Lap one row over the other enough to 
cover the stitches. The centre can be finished by 
covering a large button with flannel and sewing it 
on. 
Take a piece of pasteboard. Cut out two pieces 
in the shape of a heart. Have one piece about an 
inch larger all around than the other. Sew the 
edges of the two pieces together ; fasten a loop at 
the top of the small piece to hang it up by. Sew 
burrs on the large piece. The burrs should be sew¬ 
ed on before the pieces are sewed together. After 
it is finished fill with dried grasses and everlasting 
flowers. 
Let us all try and make home a pleasant place for 
our husbands and children, and if we succeed our 
lives are not all in vain. 
Aunt Daisy. 
FUKNTSHITf G-. 
The recent discussions of household art, together 
with the vast object lesson so lately presented in 
Philadelphia, have already produced good results in 
awakening and training a popular taste for artistic 
effects and graceful forms in the furnishing and 
decoration of houses. 
While books and current periodicals are filled with 
discussions and explanations of the many different 
and beautiful styles of house-furnishing which in¬ 
vite the attention of those whose purses are well 
filled, and who have only their tastes to consider, 
large class who are blessed with fine taste, but have 
only moderate means at their command. 
It would seem that much might be done in this di¬ 
rection by merely altering the shape of the ordinary 
articles of furniture, or by adopting a different but 
not necessarily more expensive style of ornament. 
Certainly much might be gained, in comfort at least, 
by constructing chairs which shall be lower at the 
back than in front, thus allowing the occupant to 
slide against the back, which should be curved to 
conform to the natural curvature of the spine. This 
slight change would make comfortable seats of the 
penitential stools usually found in parlors, and make 
sitting a rest rather than the constant effort to ob¬ 
tain a comfortable position, which it becomes with 
most people when not constrained by politeness to 
ignore aching back and tired limbs; perhaps, too, it 
might do away with the elevation of the feet and 
tilting back of the chair practised by men in their 
struggles to gain a natural position in their seats. 
Yet how few chairs, not professedly easy, are made 
with any reference to this simple rule of comfort! 
And beauty need not be sacrificed, since there is noth¬ 
ing attractive in the ordinary shape of chairs which 
could not be ns well secured in this altered shape. 
There seems, too, to be a large field for improve¬ 
ment in the appearance of stoves, especially the im¬ 
mense sheet-iron cylinders which do duty in most 
houses. Their monumental appearance might be 
ameliorated by ornamental mouldings wrought in 
the sheet which forms the stove, instead of the I 
dragons, angels, and shepherdesses which are at¬ 
tached to their sides without harmony or meaning. 
Many directions have been published to enable 
housekeepers of taste to make many articles of furni¬ 
ture for themselves, some telling how entire rooms 
may be furnirdied, with but few pieces of solid furni¬ 
ture to serve as foundation. But these directions 
usually require such an amount of material in the 
making of a single piece of furniture that the cost is 
little less than that of similar articles if purchased of 
simple designs, and without the draperies which 
form the staple of home-made furniture, while they 
are never as substantial or durable as shop-made 
goods. Besides these wash-stands with draperies, 
these curtained beds and toilet-tables made of dry- 
goods boxes, with shelves inserted, and openings 
screened with chintz, all require time, patience, and 
skill in their construction, three things which the 
housekeeper of moderate means has many calls for. 
While if the skill in such matters prove to be want¬ 
ing the result of her labors will only be a, source of 
constant mortification and regret. Better plain fur¬ 
nishing, with time and patience for the wants of fa¬ 
mily life and the needs of culture, than rooms fitted 
with embroidered lambrequins and draperied tables, 
at the expense of tired brains and hurried lives. 
These objections apply with equal force to the shell, 
cone, and leather-work frames, baskets, and similar 
a objects which many women make who do not feel 
covered with cheap 
prints and poor chroinos, framed with shells, cones, or 
pebbles, and brackets loaded with home-made trink¬ 
ets. 
Plain furniture, with rich, warm colors in carpets 
and table-covers, with walls of delicate tints, may 
make an interior attractive to strangers and satisfy¬ 
ing to the exacting taste of the owner. And for 
ornaments, pictures and beautiful china if possible, 
books certainly, and always growing plants — the 
luxury of the rich, the necessity of the poor, adding- 
fresh beauty where art has already lavished it, sup¬ 
plying the place of other adornment if circumstances 
deny them, ever changing, ever more beautiful, and 
pleasing to every sense, nothing which art has given 
us can compare in fascination with these, nature’s 
own ornaments, whether as home adornments or as 
an interesting and instructive study. A. E. P. 
STRAW BRACKETS. 
Use good-sized, smooth straws, of any kind of 
grain. Cut ten pieces four and a half inches in 
length, twenty pieces four inches in length, and 
twelve pieces three inches in length. Sew them side 
by side on a piece of cardboard two inches wide, in 
the following order: two three inches long, two four 
inches long, two four and a half inches long, two four 
inches long; repeat four times from X, ending the 
last group with two of the shortest lengths. There 
will be five groups when completed. In sewing them 
to the cardboard let both ends project equally over 
the cardboard ; let the lines of stitches be about half 
an inch from the ends of the shortest straws, bend 
into a semicircular shape, and sew a back to it of 
pasteboard two inches wide and four and a half long. 
Xow cover the stitches made by covering the front 
with the half a straw laid over them and fastened at 
each end to the back of the bracket. Make a rosette 
about two and half inches in diameter of straws split, 
using it as you would ribbon; sew in the front; take 
two straws sixteen inches long, cross them about three 
and a half inches from the smallest ends, and fasten 
with a rosette of straw similar to the one on the 
bracket; sew the other ends one to each side of the 
back of the bracket to hang up by. If desired, a bot¬ 
tom can be fitted to them. PlaGe a bunch of leaves 
and grasses in them or lay a photograph on them. 
They are bright, beautiful, and cheap ornaments, of 
no trouble and soon made. Jennie. 
A PRETTY MAT. 
Cut a circular mat of white cardboard; take raw 
cotton; card or pick it until fleecy; lay it on the 
cardboard around the edge in a rounded form, about 
one and a half inches high, leaving a space in the cen¬ 
tre; when shaped evenly, slip off and spread the 
space to be covered with mucilage; lay back into 
place ; when dried, gum bits of bright scarlet or blue 
zephyr about on it. Jennie. 
®Eib l^aukes’ Irion*.! iattliiiiet mul SHetorixd Some 
tomimnion.. 
171 
If you want a hanging basket for a room where more modest but not less important field is waiting that they can afford to purchase pictures or china of 
you cannot keep plants one can be made by taking for him who shall invent a style at once beautiful ! real merit to adorn their parlors. But such things, 
the crown of an old straw hat, cover the bottom and durable, yet so simple in ornamentation that the ; unless made by one endowed with talent worthy of a 
with good strong cloth, put strips of cloth up the cost shall not be greater than that of the furniture ! better cause, are clumsy and anything but orna- 
sides where the cords to hang it by are to be fasten- usually found in houses of the middle class, and mental. One good engraving or water-color chroino, 
ed on. Cover the bottom with some bright-colored I thus bring artistic furniture within the reach of that framed in plainest walnut, will afford more real plea¬ 
sure to its owner than wall 
