With strict obedience, promptitude, and a cheerful disposition a lad can hardly fail to get promoted.
To Make Your Own Toffee.—To one pound of the best Demerara sugar add about a quarter of a pint of cold water and a pinch of cream of tartar. Go on boiling it until when you drop a little into cold water it goes hard. You may look for this stage in about ten minutes. Next take it off and add three ounces of butter cut into small pieces. Boil again and test in the same way for hardness. At this stage put in lemon juice to flavour it and then pour the mixture into oiled tins. When it is nearly cold mark it into squares, and when it is quite cold divide it according to these marks.
Steam Rings.—When the kettle is boiling and sending steam from its spout gently raise the lid and then shut it down again deftly. This will force the steam rapidly from the spout in the shape of very pretty rings which will rise in the air, growing larger and larger.
Skeleton Leaves.—Leaves from which the reader intends to derive the skeleton should be gathered fresh from tree or shrub, and put in an earthen pan filled with rain water and placed in the sunshine. When the substance of the leaf becomes soft and easily detached, they should be removed to another pan, containing clean water, in which they must be shaken about until the soft tissue breaks away from the skeleton. Wash again in fresh water, and so continue until only the ribs and nervures remain. A soft tooth-brush, carefully used, will assist in the final part of this operation, the leaf being held in the palm of the hand during the process. Now for the bleaching. Purchase two pennyworth of purified chloride of lime, and dissolve it in a pint of water. In this solution put your skeleton leaves, and keep them under observation. As soon as one has become quite white it should be taken out and rinsed in clear water, then carefully dried. The softening process will take weeks, in some tougher species of leaf it may take months. This period may be lessened by using a small quantity of either muriatic acid or chloride of lime, but with either of these agents there is danger of rotting the skeleton. The rain-water process is the safest and most permanent.
To Imitate a Nightingale.—Many years ago a clever Frenchman analysed the song of the nightingale and made out that it consists of the following sounds:—
Temee temee temee tan
Spretu zqua
Querree pee pee
Teeo teeo teeo tix
Quteeo quteeo quteeo
Zquo zquo zquo zquo
Zee zee zee zee zee zee zee
Querrer teeu zqula peepee quee.
Pith Beads.—A little boy we know amuses himself by threading pieces of pith and then painting the pith with water colours. When his mother wears the necklace he has made in this way people are very curious to know what the beads are, and fancy they must have been made by the natives of foreign parts, probably of the South Sea Islands.
Hints on Handwriting.—Although typewriters are excellent things, they are comparatively useless just in those particular cases where distinct handwriting is of the greatest importance, and where it is so very rarely met with. By some strange process of reasoning, it has come about that almost any sort of writing is thought good enough for a postcard, telegram, or medical prescription. The same man who would make a very fair performance when engaged on a long communication, in which the context would be almost certain to help the reader to decipher a queer word here and there, will dash off the most puzzling penmanship when writing a short but urgent note or postcard. The very brevity of the communication adds to the difficulty of understanding it. When the present writer was at school, it was impressed upon us that, whatever else might be faulty, the addressing of the envelope should be as near perfection as we could make it. The postman of the present day will tell you that this arrangement is now reversed, and, with the exception of letters sent out by business firms, the addresses he has to grapple with are very badly and incompletely written.
Here are a few short hints, the acting upon which will vastly improve the most slovenly handwriting in a week, if persevered in. In the first place, reduce the slope of your handwriting until it is almost, if not quite vertical. Then break yourself of the habit of crowding your letters too closely together, on the one hand, and sprawling them out unduly, on the other. Instead of sprawling the letters out so, write each character compactly, but join it to the following one by a distinct link-stroke, as it were. This is the sort of writing approved of by the Civil Service Commissioners. At one time much stress was laid upon the importance of thick and thin strokes, hair strokes, and so on. Excepting in the case of professional engravers, and for artistic purposes, all these refinements are out of date. What is of vastly more importance is the making of a careful distinction between the letters m, n, and u, and again between the letters e and i. Good test-words to practice with are these: union, commence, ounce, suit, sweet, manumotive, immense, unite, untie. Characters which extend above or below the line should not do so more than is sufficient to prevent their being mistaken for other letters. All the i’s should be dotted and the t’s crossed. Finally, the last letter of every word should be written distinctly, no matter in what hurry you may be, for it is wonderful what an aid to legibility the observance of this simple rule will afford. Those who follow these hints may never write a pretty hand, but they can scarcely fail to write a legible one, no small accomplishment in these days, when so many of us can do almost any out-of-the-way thing, but find it difficult to sign our names distinctly.
Secret Writing.—Mix well some lard with a little Venice turpentine, and rub a small part of it equally on very thin paper by means of a piece of fine sponge, or in some other way. Lay this with the greasy side downwards upon a sheet of note-paper, and write your message upon the plain side of the greasy paper with a style or the thin end of your pen-holder, using a little pressure. Nothing will be seen on the note-paper; but what you have written may be made visible there by dusting upon it some pounded charcoal or other coloured dust. Shake or blow this dust away and there will remain as much of it as has fallen upon the parts where your style pressed the lard upon the note-paper.