Once more the drum beat, the flag was unfurled, and away went the boys, as happy a throng of boys as ever got together on Christmas-day.
This is how the war of the Woods and the Tins—including the Shorts—came to an end.
CHRISTMAS MORNING.
[THE FAIRY FUNGI.]
BY SOPHIE B. HERRICK.
The hill-sides of the southern part of France are covered with vineyards, where the luscious grapes round out under the late summer sunshine into globes of delicious sweetness. When the grapes are ripe, the peasants—men, women, and children—may be seen gayly trooping to the vineyards to pick them for wine. In the famous Steinburger vineyard the pickers are all girls about eighteen years old. Each girl has a row to pick, and they begin together, and move forward as steadily and evenly as a regiment of soldiers. With their gay petticoats looped up so that they may not brush off the ripe grapes, and their bright stockings and mittens, they make a very pretty picture moving along between the rows, snipping the ripe grapes, and letting them drop into their baskets. When the baskets are full they are emptied into a tub, which the men lift by leathern straps and carry to the road-side press. The juice which comes spurting out of the press is placed in vats or barrels, and there left to ferment, which changes the juice, or must, into wine. When the cook wants her bread to ferment, or rise, she plants it with yeast; but the wine has nothing planted in it, and yet it ferments.
