to each of your bridge piers, by erecting sides made on the pattern of Fig. 170, and either capping them with a paper roof or log-cabin built pyramids, composed of pieces of matches of different lengths, growing smaller toward the top.
A Paper Flag,
upon the end of a broom-straw, will add dignity and effect to your bridge; erect it by thrusting the lower end of the flag-staff through the roof and pier.
Tiring of bridges and puzzles, you can lay out
A Pioneer Settlement,
and with toothpicks and matches build log-cabins, such as those in which our ancestors lived when this land was covered with vast forests of trees and populated with painted Indians and wild beasts. Roof your houses with cards bent in the shape of a roof, and build your chimneys at one end of the house.
The Chimneys
in all log-cabins are built outside and against one end of the house, and are usually made of sticks and mud, or stones and mud; but as the rooms in an ordinary dwelling or flat furnish neither stones nor clay, you must do as our ancestors did: use the material at hand; which, in your case, will probably be spools from your mother’s work-basket. Set the spools, one on top of another, against the end of your match-stick house and your work is done.
Not only is your work done, but, if you have followed all these directions, probably the day is also done, and you are ready for bed and to dream of living in safety-match houses near the shores of a looking-glass lake; and as you listen you will hear the glass waves breaking on the shore, and the howl of the toothpick timber-wolves as they steal among the rocky crags, made of spelling-books, arithmetics and dictionaries; or you may be startled from your sleep by the crack of a match-gun and the answering boom of a spool-cannon; but these things will only make your sleep the more peaceful and refreshing.
