Color
if you like, in the pretty work of basket-making. The soft broken colors, brightened at times by touches of more brilliant tones, are really beautiful, while even those which, alone, seem crude and glaring, by some happy accident of combination often produce charming effects. A fine line of black is sometimes effective and looks well next to the whitest of the natural-colored reeds.
It is
A Law in Decoration
that bands of color should be so placed as to give the idea of additional strength to the object decorated—that is, on the most exposed parts, such as the fullest swell of a curve and the base and edge. You will find that this rule is observed in most decorated pottery, and it is a good one to follow in basket-weaving; the nearer one comes to embodying it in the work, the more satisfactory are the results.
Another style of decoration is to start with a dark color at the base of the basket and gradually work in the different shades up to the lightest color at the edge. One color need not be used in this, such as red running up to pink, but gradual blending of one color into another.
CHAPTER XVII
AN “ABE” LINCOLN LOG-CABIN
A bright, gray-eyed little Kentucky boy, of whom all have heard and whose memory is honored by the entire nation, lived years ago in a quaint log-cabin so small that it would now seem to be about the right size for a large play-house. There was but one room, and that contained only a few pieces of rough home-made furniture. The boy, with his musical laugh, was busy and healthy, making the best of everything and sleeping soundly on the dried leaves piled in one corner of the loft over the room. There were no stairs for the little fellow to ascend, so he climbed to his primitive couch by means of wooden pegs driven in the side of the wall. He never complained of any hardship, but always tried to better things; and after he grew up to manhood he tried to better his country, and succeeded.
Imagine this brave boy dressed in the every-day costume of the place and times, wearing a 'coon-skin cap which partially covered his thick dark hair, a homespun shirt, trousers of roughly tanned deerskin, and on his feet, not shoes, but home-made moccasins. Thus attired, he daily trudged by the side of his sister Nancy, walking several miles to a school-house, which was also built of logs, so arranged that they stuck out and formed little recesses in which the children played hide-and-seek. There were no windows in the building; the day crept through the open space where a log had been removed to admit light to enable the girls and boys to see to study. The school floor was the bare brown earth, not even boards; yet from such modest surroundings came one of the greatest of Americans. Could you have been at the World’s Fair in 1893 you might have seen a log-cabin which was the home of this boy after the family had moved to Illinois. The house was on exhibition at the Fair, having been purchased for the purpose by a special association.