A NEW ENGLAND SCHOOL

Procure a wooden box (a starch box will be about the right size), take out one side and cut a window in each end. Paint it if you like. The outside maybe painted to represent bricks,, or paint it brown, but before the paint is dry, sprinkle fine white sand over it. A square piece of wood glued to the bottom of the box answers for a platform. For a penny you can buy a toy table, which is for the teacher's desk. Make some little benches of spools of different sizes, placed in rows each side of the box, leaving a space through the center for an aisle.

Cut some small maps from an old geography, paste them on card- board, bind with braid or narrow strips of paper, and hang upon the sides. On each side of the desk paste a blackboard, made of black card-board, with figures and letters written thereon. Put up a row of hooks made of bent pins, with little hats and bonnets hung on them. The kid tops that come on perfume bottles make cunning little hats.

Now our school-house is ready for the scholars, which are made as follows : For the bodies use stiff wire ; bonnet wire is best. Take a piece of wire and draw out the length from head to foot, allowing suf- ficient length for the feet ; turn up again to lower part of body, twist around around and cut off. Take another piece long enough for the arms and hands. Twist it around the shoulders, letting the two ends spread out in shape of a cross. Now take some raisins, select the largest for heads, put one on the wire for the neck and a large one above that for the head ; sew two white beads in for eyes and three or four for the teeth. The nose will come quite natural without any assis- tance. String the arms and legs, turning up the ends to form the feet. Dress them according to fancy, some as boys with smock frocks, swal- low-tailed coats, stand-up collars, etc., and others as girls with dresses, aprons, wide ruffles around their necks, etc. The figures being made of wire you can bend them in any position you wish ; some with their hands to their faces as though crying, others with their hands turned as if whispering, some with books in their hands in the act of studying.

Books are made of paper cut and sewed together. Put one boy in the corner with a dunce cap on his head and have a tardy scholar just stepping in with her school bag on her arm.

HOME-MADE TOYS. 29

For the teacher make a rag body, using a sharp-pointed hickory nut for a head ; put on a ruffled cap, a black dress with a three-cornered handkei'chief pinned across her shoulders ; make the hands of a small piece of putty or wax ; seat her behind the desk and you have quite a formidable-looking teacher. Place some books and a birch rod made of broom-corn on the desk.