Fig.72 - The Robinson Crusoe Hat.
To dress up and pretend is something every little girl, and boy too, for that matter, likes to do, and there is no better place for having this kind of fun and no greater storehouse for dress-up material than the wide, sunny fields and green, shady forest on a summer's day.
If you want to be a wood-nymph, a fairy, or a pioneer; if you would be a fashionable lady decked in jewels rare, or a rollicking cowboy, or Robinson Crusoe, it is all the same to Mother Nature's department store. Fields, Woods & Co. can furnish all you need. If the goods are not always ready to wear, they are at least ready to be made up into what you want.
Why, you can even be a little savage and wear a skirt made of a fringe of long grasses, like the wood-nymph's dress, and bracelets of slender, golden-brown rootlets, if that pleases you; all the materials are ready to your hand. And you can make a
Robinson Crusoe Hat
of the large leaves of the scrub-oak—a pretty and becoming hat and one that will keep your head cool though you walk under the hottest of noonday suns.
The photograph given here shows one little girl who likes immensely to wear her Crusoe hat, and [Fig. 72] shows just how the hat looks when not on her head.
It won't take more than five minutes to make the hat, but first you must gather the leaves. Ordinary oak-leaves are too small to use; it is on the scrub-oak that you will find them large enough. The scrub-oak grows low, like a bush, and the leaves will be quite within your reach. Like a good shopkeeper, this kind of oak shows his customers leaves of various sizes, but it is the very largest that you must take, and only the ones that are dark-green in color. The pretty new light-green or brownish leaves will soon wilt and curl on the edges, while a hat made of the older, tougher ones will last in good condition several days if left out in the dew at night or kept damp in the house.