The Helena independent. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1875-1943, 1892-02-15

simple refreshments, a.. . inexpensive pres
ents are kept the rule. The only formality
needful to be insisted upon is that the
young guests i'll knee pants and guimpes
shall greet the parents of their schoolmats
on arrival and departure as ~scrupulously as
though they were grown people at a rscep-
ton.
Gifts made at home are in better taste
than those bought for the occasion. Even
q little girl would much prefer to feel her
echoolmates had been planning and working
for her, than to receive a plush album or a
box Of perfumery or a pearl-handled knife,
bought at the %store.'
In a neighborhood Of country houses.
whero good taste prevails and there GER
tainly is plenty of money for spending, the
gifts al. one of these small festivities were
all Of q charminely rustic character. They
were planned for a young girl whose
''sweet tooth" was we'll known, m who
was, moreover. q perfect little squirrel for
nuts and barks.
Her schoolmates decided to celebrate
these tastes. The sum of 81 was collected
and expended for q number of the familiar
little round Japanese baskets and the gay
colored little Japanese straw boxes, with q
variety Of bright ribbons to decorate them,
tbAA q Aop ~ q J
of silksn Turkish embroidery for tray cloth.
The dainties to fill tho baskets were
gathered from the woods and hillsides. One
was full OF glossy, three-oornered beech
nuts; another of the tiny brown hazelnuts;
another was packed with chestnuts; another
with great butternut meats (the nuts had
been cracked by an expert and the meats
aeleoted. SO that all were double and I'M
broken; another basket held hickory meats
crystalllzed in sugar; another was full of
sugared rose leaves; the contents of still
another were checkerberry and wintergreen
leaves. countless and fragrant; and still an
other was packed close with dainty slivers
of birch bark and sassafras; another was
filled with little hearts of maple sugar, and
the smallest, shyest boy of all brought his
basket full of tiny cubes OF tender sweet
flag root. cooked for days in a sugar syrup,
then spread out to partially dry, then
dipped IN sugar grains--n d~elioacy Of which
he knew this particular schoolmate to BIO
very fond. The laughing young hostess
was sure, without words, that her school.
mates had been thinking of her through
the year.
Az another birthday party in the snme
CIRCLE Of children-this time for a boy-the
guests arrived in a body and came into tho
parlor, after much mysterious rustlinR of
papers without, to greet and congratulate
their young host, each bearing a pot of
flowers, in bloom or in bud. These gifts,
too, were mex penHlva, aud mad been planned
with a knowledge of their schoolfellow's
tastes. They knew he delighted in flowers.
There was n Chinese lilv in full. fragrant
bloom: a fuschia, we'll budded; n pot OF
%heliotrope; n winter morning-alory; u pair
of hanging pots of oxnlis, white and golden;
pots of crocus, %scillas, hyacinths, and a
great ioss gernninm, and from "A little girl.
very much disappointed because they had
no come into bloom, n long, narrow win
dow box of parrot tulips.
For weeks these children Ind been run
ming about to one aeothsr's houses, watch
ing and enjoying the growth of the various
plants, started and calculated upon for