Cover the tub with green crimped tissue-paper and bank up with flowers—paper flowers if no others can be obtained. Beginning at the top, wrap the pole with ribbon or strips of pink and white cambric in alternate stripes. This can best be done before the pole is erected. Buy two toy hoops, the smallest measuring about three feet, the largest four feet in diameter. Wrap these hoops with greens of some kind—evergreens if you can find no others—adding sprays of tree blossoms and all the flowers you can manage to get.
Fig. [430].—On the end of each ribbon fasten a small bell.
Besides the two large hoops you will need fourteen small ones about nine inches in diameter. These you can make of wire for yourself. Wrap eight of the small hoops with pink, and six with white cambric, then decorate with flowers and green leaves. Keep the decoration quite narrow, in order to leave as large an opening as possible in the centre. Get two and two-thirds yards of narrow pink ribbon and two yards of narrow white ribbon; divide the pink into eight and the white into six pieces. On the end of each ribbon fasten a small toy bell; tie the ribbon on the small hoops, the white ones on the white hoops, the pink on the pink hoops, as shown in [Fig. 430]. Space the largest hoop off into eight equal parts and tie the small pink hoops to it at these points by their ribbons. Divide the other hoops into six equal parts and attach the small white hoops in the same manner. With wire or ribbon suspend the hoops from the top of the pole as in the illustration. Decorate the top of the pole with small flags and flowers.
The Balls
Make four paper balls in this way: Take a piece of newspaper and, placing a small weight of some kind in the middle, crush it and roll it into a ball four inches in diameter; place the ball in the centre of a square of tissue-paper and bring the four corners of the paper together over the top; overlap the corners and fold and smooth down the fulness at the sides. Wrap the ball with fine cord, making six melon-like divisions, as in [Fig. 431]. Make two of the balls of pink tissue-paper and two of white. Have ready on a tray a number of small favors consisting of two or three flowers tied together, some with pink, some with white ribbon.
Fig. [431].—Wrap the ball with fine cord.
The decorations of the pole may be added to or curtailed as circumstances permit, and if flowers are scarce paper flowers may be mingled with the natural ones, and the difference will hardly be noticed. When