Take a bottle holding eight or ten ounces, and insert a tube in the cork. A fine glass tube or even a pipe-stem will answer.
The tube should reach nearly but not quite to the bottom of the bottle, and should fit air-tight in the cork.
Fill the bottle about three-fourths full of water, and blow with considerable force down the tube. Upon removing the mouth, the water will spurt out, forming a miniature fountain; which will continue to play as long as any water remains in the bottle.
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THE FAN FROM NAGASAKI.
A few months ago, a friend who had been for several years a resident of Japan, came home to America for a visit, and brought with her a bright little son and daughter, neither of whom had ever set foot on our American shores before. The children were delighted with their American cousins; and evidently could not find words strong enough to sound the praises of the new games and sports which they were constantly learning.
Their lives had been spent with Chinese or Japanese nurses; and although kind-hearted and devoted as my friend assured me these people were, the little exiles must have had a sorry time of it in their foreign play-room, when compared with our own boys and girls. The respect and almost reverence with which they regarded Jack, the most daring scapegrace in our family, would have been very amusing had it not been pathetic. What Jack did was always marvelous in their eyes, and into many an unsuspected trap they were beguiled by his mischievous pranks. They were what most of you boys and girls would call very green, when they first reached us, but under Jack’s tuition, I fear that next winter—in fact, at the very time you are reading this—perhaps they will be trying the same tricks upon their innocent Japanese nurse that Jack tried upon them.
It will not be strange if that long-suffering personage does not in his secret heart have less respect for this illustrious nation than he has been wont to have before.
But if so ignorant in most things, these children were very ingenious and uncommonly happy in making things of paper.
One rainy morning, about a week after they came to us, I had occasion to go into the nursery for something, and was quite surprised to find the children busily engaged in folding paper. Edith had brought down some rice-paper from her trunk, and with the help of her brother, was fashioning all sorts of odd things from it; while the younger members of my own family were looking on with intense interest.