Part 8

Plant-stands for halls are very favorite decorations nowadays; but, of course, the plants must be hardy, as they will be subject to sudden changes of temperature. One lady made a fine effect by cultivating young pine-trees, spruces, and firs in the large stone jars of her hall. Cocoanut palms or India-rubber plants are the favorite exotics. Hardy ferns group in well for these hall plant-stands. In the bottom of each jar should be placed some broken pottery, for drainage, placed so that the moisture will drain down through the fragments without the soil choking the jar. Over the potsherds a little cocoanut moss should be placed, and then a mixture of leaf-mold, rotten turf and peat, and glass-maker’s sand, to keep the whole porous. On the surface of the pots and between them should be put wood moss, as in the case of stands for sitting-rooms. A common seed-pan, filled with _selaginalla denticulata_ dropped into a small vase, has a fine effect; long sprays grow out over the sides of the vase and drop down eight to ten inches.

In an ordinary apartment, where the window-sills are not wide enough to hold flower-pots, the plan of wire stands is an admirable one for the window gardener. A piece of oil-cloth under the stand catches all the drippings, and a servant-girl with a wiping-towel can clean up all the _débris_. Soft-wooded plants and those with soft leaves should be arranged as near the window as possible; and if rearranged and turned against the light often, so much the better. Hard-leaved plants, like ivy and the India-rubber plant, may be put anywhere away from the light. But most plants need light before anything. The _yucca quadricolor_, so much used in the decorative house-jars or vases, becomes beautifully tinted with crimson if it has enough light. Now, if a lady has not room for many rustic _jardinières_ and ornamental flower-stands in her room, she can have zinc-pans and pots, neatly enameled and painted, set on the floor, in which her larger plants may be put out, This is a very good idea for grouping; for she thus produces in her _tout ensemble_ some of the wild confusion and grace of Nature.

A climbing rose should go scattering itself over an imperceptible wire trellis. A geranium should steadily blossom beneath. A group of yucca, agave, dracæna, Jerusalem cherry, should form a distinct and effective grouping below. And then beautiful trailing plants should drop from hanging baskets, and from every “coigne of vantage.” Ivy grows well in the shade, and may be employed for trailing around sofas, couches, _tête-à-tête_ chairs, and picture-frames. Ladies sometimes tie a bottle of water behind a picture-frame, and allow the long shoots of nasturtion to grow out as if from the wall. The effect is startling. Mirrors are often cunningly placed behind a flowering plant which is growing in a hanging basket against the wall, thus doubling the effect.

As the days grow shorter, and the winter threatens to come upon us apace, we are always tempted to bring in from the garden the flowers that we think will last. Just before the fatal frosts, roots of mignonette should be planted in pots and put in a dark closet for a few days, where the plant takes root and accommodates itself to its change of base. It will make a room sweet all winter.

A lady can make all sorts of ornamental flower-pot coverings, and herself arrange pretty leather and paper standard covers for the ugly but useful flower-pot of commerce; or she can buy at most country potteries some very artistic flower-pots--also useful. And to put red, green, and blue glass tubes for hyacinths among these gives her window a very pretty effect. The very study of color in these minor matters adds much to her window garden. It is lucky for all lovers of beauty that beauty is now cheap. Art is putting her slender foot down everywhere; and it is almost possible, in a remote country village, to get the delicate classic shapes in cheap pottery which the cultivated Greeks imagined three thousand years ago.

For internal decoration by means of cut flowers, it seems almost absurd to attempt to delineate the proper thing to do; for, if a lady has taste, she will know without being told. But some few hints may not appear impertinent.

For the breakfast-table and dinner-table fresh flowers are almost indispensable. The pretty, cheap, and useful combinations of glass and silver, of china and pottery, which are made to hold flowers, are innumerable. Select a high vase, and fill it every day with fresh grasses, a few daisies, or some graceful ferns combined with white lilies, and you have always a superb center-piece.

For the summer, a large lump of ice covered with flowers, in a silver or glass dish, is delightfully refreshing. It also keeps away the flies. In grand party decorations ice is now freely used, and if some way can be devised to get the refuse water out of the way, it will be always a good thing for a country party or at a grand _fête_ at Newport. For great blocks of ice covered with vines and flowers, lighted from behind, have a splendid effect. They cool the air and keep all the flowers fresh. Flowers, when cut, demand coolness; and the effect of the white crystal column is always beautiful.

Some ladies have a large tub put in the corner of the room, and the pyramid of ice placed in that. Then the tub can be masked by moss, branches of trees, evergreen, or any floral device, and the ice is draped with garlands. At a _fête_ at Newport, in 1879, this ice decoration was much admired. At a ball given by the Prince of Wales to the Czarina of Russia in the large conservatory of the Royal Horticultural Society of South Kensington, ten tons of ice were used to build an ornamental rockery. This was draped with drooping ferns and graceful vines, and was surrounded with crimson baize and lighted from behind.

Nothing is so pretty for the breakfast- or dinner-table as a tall, slender vase which carries the floral decoration high up above the articles of food. Nor is a garden necessary for this species of decoration. Wild flowers, ferns, grasses, and all the beautiful furniture of forest and field, make these vases doubly elegant.

In the rose season--in the sweet days of June--most country gardens overflow with the always regal flower; and this is a table ornament of the highest. The great, broad, low baskets are best for these full, rich queens of color and fragrance. Mass your roses for the middle of the table, and have specimen glasses for some of the more rare varieties. The rose is a cleanly flower, and can be put anywhere near food. But if an unlucky visitor has the rose-cold, then it must be put far away; for the subtile, pungent odor of a rose makes the sufferer sneeze fearfully. There are some families in which roses are thus tabooed.

A basket of roses is the prettiest thing in the world; and the lady going into the country for the summer had better supply herself with a number of these, with handles, from the florist or the basket-maker. If she gets a tin pan also fitted in cunningly, she has the loveliest table ornamentation all ready. Her buffets, her parlor-table, her piano, her brackets can all hold these pleasant things, for which no money need be paid, but which have a value far above money. Never give these baskets a heavy, packed look, but allow plenty of the rich green leaves of the rose to set them off. It seems to us that ladies might create an endless succession of Home Amusements by studying how to vary the effect of their vases and baskets of flowers.

A simple bunch of yellow buttercups in the early spring will make a purple room perfectly beautiful; and dandelions can be massed with great effect. Yellow flowers are rare, but necessary to produce fine contrasts of color. We all tend too much to the red and white easily-obtained effects. They are poor compared with what we can do.

If Fashion has rather run its worship of the daisy into the ground, Fashion might have done a worse thing. We can scarcely blame Fashion for going back to this impressive flower, which in its simplicity has moved all philosophers, poets, and fortune-tellers to admire and study it.

It seems to us that something more cheerful than our usual Christmas decorations could be invented. We make them too somber. Try mixing in the beautiful bitter-sweet berries, which are so very easily obtained, and which keep all winter. The holly is not so common with us as in England; still, many a New England swamp produces a host of hips and haws and red berries.

The business of preserving autumn-leaves shows ten failures to one success. Yet, when autumn leaves are well preserved, they are very charming means of winter decoration. They are luminous at evening, and, mixed with ferns and grasses, are perpetual bouquets. But do not varnish them: that gives them a waxy effect, which is detestable. Press them carefully, and iron them under a piece of brown paper. That seems to preserve the color.

Grasses, on the contrary, and a thousand pods and seed-vessels, grains and cat-tails, and certain weeds, dry into beautiful colors and make most wonderful groups for the parlor mantel. The young ladies of our vast continent can not do a better thing than to each year add to these beautiful and most graceful bouquets, which retain, like the fabled Dryads, all the fascination of Nature, even when they have passed into sticks and dry leaves.

XIV.

CAGED BIRDS AND AVIARIES.

From flowers to birds is a natural transition, and we enter upon that part of Home Amusement which centers around a cage of singing-birds. It is a dreadful thing to snare and to imprison an innocent bird; therefore we begin with that bird which seems to take most kindly to captivity--the canary.

Travelers tell us that this yellow darling has gray plumage at home; but as we know them they are generally yellow, white, green, or brown. Climate, food, and intermixture of breeds has, no doubt, to do with this. The canary, which in France is nearly white, at Teneriffe is as brown as a berry. We can not tell why they are always yellow in cages.

The exact date of the introduction of the canary is not known to us. In 1610 the bird was considered a great rarity. According to some authors, the island of Elba was the first European ground on which the canary found a resting-place for its tiny foot. A ship bound for Leghorn, they say, having on board a number of sweet songsters, foundered near this island, on which the birds, set at liberty by the accident, found a refuge; and the climate was so congenial to their nature that they remained and bred, and would probably have remained there had not their unlucky, fatal gifts of beauty and song betrayed them to the bird-catchers, who hunted them so assiduously that not a single specimen was left on the island. From Italy these birds soon found their way into France and Germany, from the latter of which countries and the Tyrol we now receive our best supplies. Canary breeding and teaching is conducted in the Tyrol on a large scale, and these trainers have the power always to obtain large prices for their birds. Canary societies exist in England, and small traders, like Poll Sneedlepipes, compete for prizes.

Canary critics recognize two varieties--two grand divisions--in fancy canaries: “gay birds,” or “gay spangles,” and fancy, or “mealy,” birds--the first being plain, like the original stock, and the last variegated. This also includes the _Jonques_, or _Jonquils_, as the yellow birds are technically called. The varieties of these two grand divisions are almost innumerable, nearly every year producing a new one, which, like a prize flower, is in high favor until superseded by a greater beauty. Every year has its fashionable bird, its professional beauty, its Mrs. Langtry, until some Mrs. Cornwallis West or Lady Lonsdale carries off the palm. Like all hobbies, this is a hobby desperately ridden. It is a “Dutch taste for tulips,” and immense prices are given for prize canaries, even by men who can not afford to speculate in such very uncertain stock.

There are certain standard properties which are always considered essential toward gaining a prize. The first property considered in the show bird is the “cap,” which must be of a good gold color. The next is purity of color through the whole bird. Then the wings and tail, which must be black quite home to the quill. The fourth relates to the spangle, which must be distinct. Fifth, size and shape. Besides these properties there are what are called “additional beauties,” not essential to the winning of a prize, but adding to a bird’s chances. These are five in number: pinions, for size and regularity; swallow and throat, for size; fair breast, for regularity; legs and flight, for blackness. In explanation of this it may be noted that from the beak to the back of the neck is called the “cap,” and this should be of a clear orange-color, full and rich in the ground, and with black edges to the feathers. The feathers on the loins, or the _saddle_ as it is sometimes called, as well as those of the breast, must be free from black, while the wings must have no admixture of any other color. No bird can fairly compete for a prize which has not black on the stock or neb of the back, flight, or tail feathers, or that has less than eighteen flying feathers in each wing or less than twelve in the tail. Such, lady bird-fanciers, is a prize canary in England!

Holborn is the great canary mart. In St. Andrew’s Street every third or fourth house is occupied by a dealer, and those who desire to possess a first-rate singer should visit that street. It is best to go by gaslight, when all the birds are on the twitter.

Now, in America we have the plain yellow bird, with no admixture of black; and yet the same conditions seem to be observed as to his treatment. Sacrifice the beauty of your bird to his song, which is his chief accomplishment. He should have a comfortable mahogany cage, and be allowed to step into it of his own accord. It should be well furnished with seed and water. Place a light in front of the cage, and he will begin to sing. A single hemp-seed or a morsel of chickweed will induce the little prisoner to sing almost immediately. They are very amiable and happy in captivity.

The blackcap, called the “mock-nightingale,” is a very charming household pet, if he will live. His power of song is almost equal to that of the nightingale. He is sometimes called “the English mocking-bird,” and he imitates any songster whom he may hear--blackbird, thrush, or meadow-lark. They are by no means plentiful birds, and they bring a good price in the market. They are about the same size as the linnet, and the prevailing colors of the plumage are ashen-gray and olive-green. The old birds feed their young on caterpillars, moths, and other insects. They can be reared, however, on bread and milk. If brought up with a canary or a nightingale, they will acquire a beautiful song composed of their own natural notes and those of these brilliant performers. This bird has been known to live twelve or sixteen years in confinement. It demands some sort of fruit, like cherries, currants, or raspberries in summer; a bit of apple, pine, or orange in winter. To keep it in perfect health, it must have an iron nail in its cup of water.

But _chacun à son goût_. Every lady has her preferences as to her feathered favorites. Suffice it to say a few words as to the care of these poor little creatures.

Birds are naturally tender things. They are not born to live in cages; therefore they should be especially cared for. Domestic pets are apt to come to untimely ends, particularly if left to the care of servants, who regard them as a burden and a nuisance, and too often cruelly neglect them. Birds in captivity are very liable to diseases which do not attack them in their wild state; and in the various casualties which endanger their prison life, their owners should seek to protect them and to cure them. Let it be one of the Home Amusements for the lady to feed her pet canary--to clean its cage, or see that it is done. We have seen a little boy of seven take such care of his pet canary that he shamed all the older people in the house; and a happier bird never lived.

If you keep but one bird in a cage in very hot weather, his cage should be cleansed once a day. If you minister personally to the comfort of your bird, he will grow very much attached to you. If the perches are not kept clean, the birds become afflicted with the gout and other maladies, resulting in the loss of toes.

Wooden cages, especially of mahogany, are the best, as they are less likely to harbor insects. If of fir or soft wood, the cage should be painted green. The wires of a cage should never be painted, as the wire being non-absorbent, the bird pecks off and eats the paint, which poisons it. Japanned zinc cages are very well. A cage should not be too open. There should always be a snug corner or sheltered place, where the bird can retire and shun observation. It is great cruelty to hang a cage in the sun unprotected. Remember that in their free state birds seek the shady tree. In a shower always bring your birds indoors, for they are apt to take cold if wet in an imprisoned state.

It is a pity that more of our country residents have not the idea of an aviary. It is so very pretty--an abiding-place of beauty, love, song, and happiness. Surely it does not cost so much as a greenhouse.

The model aviary is built of brick or stone, iron and glass, with a stove and pipes fitted to keep it of an even temperature all winter. The floor should be an earthen one, beaten hard, like the floors of some barns. Bricks are too cold. Planks harbor insects, retain bad smells, and form coverts for rats and mice. The roof of the aviary should be semicircular or shelving, with vines and flowing creepers trailing over it, so that there shall be a rustle of green leaves steeped in sunshine, and air laden with sweet perfume to delight the birds within. There should be also creepers and shrubs growing inside for the birds to nest in. Perches and wicker baskets with horse-hair and wool should be left around, and there should be a small marble basin and fountain in the middle, of which the water should be always fresh and changing for the birds to drink. This is, of course, a very magnificent aviary, costing money. But what an addition to Home Amusements to care for the happy family within! The birds can be of all sorts. At the period of migration--about the last of August--all birds kept in confinement show a great desire to get out, and often beat themselves to death against the walls of their cages. In this time of ardent enterprise the top of the aviary or the cages should be covered with dark cloth, and the poor things shut out from the light.

A much cheaper aviary is built in the form of a large cage on the top of a tree, with open exit and entrances, fitted up with every convenience of bird-furnishing, and visited twice a day by the boys of the family. Here many birds come to lodge and get tamed, as the Indian does by having a house and garden, and often one pair of birds comes back several times. This is a charming sort of aviary, and very much to be commended. What romantic tales of a wayside inn do the robin redbreasts and orioles tell the peeping boy as he goes up the ladder to feed his familiar friends! It is the prettiest sort of correspondence with _l’inconnu_!

It is a curious thing that the lungs of birds in captivity always suffer from impurity of air, especially when the temperature is at all varied; this must be one of the points very carefully attended to.

For food--we now are getting to a very creepy stage of our narrative--meal-worms, ugh! are the _pièce de résistance_; but canaries, goldfinches, bullfinches, linnets--all, God bless them!--prefer seed; while chaffinches, buntings, and the whole tit family and larks must have seeds, insects, and fat meat--namely, worms. The nightingales, thrushes, redbreasts, blackcaps, must have worms, crickets, cockroaches, and ant-eggs. The maggots of the blow-fly and all such tidbits, meal-worms, and flesh-maggots must be kept in reserve; and this kind of housekeeping is apt to shock the delicate sense. Let the boys of the family attend to this part of the birds’ diet. Boiled cabbage, green peas, all sorts of pudding, dry bread, and a little finely minced cooked meat, bread-crumbs mashed up and scalded in milk, milk itself, hemp-seed, a little chickweed, lettuce, and cresses, can be given to birds with advantage.

The bathing of birds must be done with great skill and wisdom. After the operation of a warm bath, with soap, which should be given to nestlings who are troubled with vermin, great care must be taken that they are not chilled, as death will be the result. Wrap them up, like little babies, in flannel.

In teaching them to sing, the voice, the piano, and flute are all good teachers. The patient and music-loving Germans teach all birds to sing. It should be begun in the morning early, when the bird is hungry; and his lesson should not last more than an hour.

Early and regular attendance, gentleness and kindness, are the _rationale_ of bird-tending, as of nearly everything else!

Those half-captives, the pigeons, should be around every country house. How beautiful they are in Venice! the pigeons of St. Mark, which have swooped about that storied piazza for so many years, because regularly fed there. All boys should learn to cultivate them; to have the lovely shifting luster of their necks lighting up the ground and making gay the twilight. How proud and pompous are the pouters! how gentle the ringdoves! and how pretty the whole family! Peacocks are very stately visitors, and, except for their horrid shrieks, are especially to be commended. The old ruffled turkey-gobbler has his charms; and the pages of Hawthorne teach us how very amusing a group of hens and chickens may become. We advise every family to have as many birds as they can possibly feed; for every bird is a study, from the blink-eyed owl which hides in the fir-tree, to the poor old goose that quacks and hobbles toward the pond. Indeed, the æsthetics are all pretending that the goose is the most beautiful of them all!--a perfect love, a type, is a goose, since Walter Crane and Kate Greenaway came in. But we still prefer the stately swan, of which splendid specimens are now beginning to add their attractions to our inland lakes. The goose is all very well in her way, but the swan is better.

XV.

PICNICS.

Perhaps it is not well to class among Home Amusements a series of entertainments which imply, at first sight, the getting away from home. But, as the basket of luncheon has to be packed at home, and the best part of a picnic is the getting home again, we must be permitted a divergence.

It is curious to see how emphatically fond of picnics the Americans are. A universal national hunger seems to seize the tired cit as the first warm day of May beams upon us. They “babble of green fields.” Best of all charities those which send the poor children off, on boats and trains, for a whiff of pure air! It is the blessed privilege of the rich to thin out the crowded tenement, and to send the overplus of an irrepressible civilization back to Nature for a moment.

But, for a Home Amusement in the country, what can compare with the joy of getting ready for a picnic? The baskets for the provisions (and be sure, Mary, not to forget the salt or the sugar), the coffee-pot that will stand being poked down into the wood-coals, the fine old swinging iron kettle, the bread, the knives, and the pail of ice. Ah!