Maple-wax Easter Eggs.
Empty the egg-shell of its contents and open a place at the small end the size of a silver dime. Stand it in an upright position with the largest opening on top, and leave it while you prepare the maple-wax, or candy. Mix enough water with some maple sugar to dissolve it, and set on the fire to cook; when it will harden in cold water it is done. Carefully fill the egg-shell with the hot maple-wax, and keeping it in an upright position, set it on the ice to cool. When the wax is perfectly cold and hard, paste an artificial daisy over the opening in the shell. Maple-wax is the nicest kind of candy, and done up in this way will remain firm and hard for a long while; and therefore these maple-wax eggs make excellent Easter gifts to send away to one’s friend at a distance. The best way to pack them is to wrap them in cotton and then put them in a tin baking-powder box, filling up the interstices with cotton to keep them from knocking about.
The box, of course, must be wrapped in paper and tied securely with a string. Packed like this, they may travel safely all over the United States. The writer sent several the distance of over seven hundred miles, and they arrived at their destination in as perfect condition as when they left her hands.
Bonbon Box.
Select a box two or three inches high—a round one is best—which has a lid that covers the entire box. Cut some straw or hay in pieces long enough to reach from the top to the edge, and glue it on the sides of the lid, covering them completely. Prepare as many halves of egg-shells as will cover the top, allowing a space one inch wide around the edge. Glue the shells down, and fill up the spaces between with straw. Near the edge, on the opposite sides, glue a loop of narrow white ribbon; these loops are to lift it with. Then glue straw on all the uncovered parts of the lid, making it a little thicker and higher at the edges. When the box is finished it resembles a nest of eggs, and makes an appropriate and acceptable Easter gift.
Easter Cards.
It is a very pretty custom, that of sending Easter cards, altogether too pretty to be allowed to lapse into disuse, as many customs which are merely the expression of sentiment are apt to do in this busy, practical country of ours. One experiences a great deal of pleasure in selecting from the stock of beautiful cards found in the stores just before Easter those that seem suitable for one’s friends, but more pleasure will be derived from home-made Easter cards, both to the sender and recipient; for it is true that into everything we make we put a part of ourselves, and into many a home-made article is woven loving thoughts which make the gift priceless, although the materials of which it is composed may have cost little or nothing.
Several years ago the writer was visiting a friend in the country twenty miles from the nearest town where Easter cards could be purchased, but when Easter approached we sent off our cards, just the same, and I am sure our friends were as pleased with them, and more pleased, than if they had been of the most expensive kind. This is how we made them:
