I remember a little German book called “Ostereier” (Easter eggs), in which a charming account is given of an Easter festival, when motto eggs were distributed to a number of children. Some of the rhymes given are very pretty; they lose in translation, but are such as “Goodness, not gold, wins love and trust,” “For meat and drink the giver thank,” “A good conscience makes a soft pillow.”
Such sentences as these do for quite small children, but a short verse from a hymn or a text can easily be written on an egg. They look very well coloured pale blue or mottled green and blue, as directed above, and the words written on after with red, or blue ink of a darker colour, and a little ornamentation round. For school-children water colours should not be used in painting the eggs, for the warm and often moist hands of the recipients of these little gifts would smear the paint.
We must now come to another kind of egg I have found much appreciated, as it is eatable, though imitation only. It is prepared thus: Procure some half egg shells which you can colour or not, as you please, but you must cut the edges as smooth as you can with a pair of small, sharp scissors; next take one pound of ground almonds (they can be bought ready prepared), mix with the beaten whites of three, or if small, four eggs, add a teaspoonful of orange flower water, or a little more, if needed, make into a paste, and stir in one pound of fine sifted loaf sugar, and work with a wooden spoon into a smooth paste; next shake a little icing sugar into the half shells, and fill them with the almond paste, scoop a piece out of the centre of each half, and as you put the two halves together insert a preserved apricot (dried) without a stone; if the apricots are too large use half ones, but whether large or small they must be pressed into suitable shapes before they are used, as they have to represent the yolks of the eggs.
When the parts are joined together, a strip of tissue paper should be fastened round the junction with white of egg, and then a ribbon or ornamental paper put round and the shells decorated with a little water colour paint. If preferred, the shells can be used as moulds only, and removed as soon as the paste is dry, but if this is to be done the two edges of the almond paste must be moistened with white of egg before they are put together, or they would come apart when the shells were removed.
The almond eggs must be put in a warm, dry place as soon as made; a very cool oven will do to dry them.
If you remove the shells, cover the almond paste with icing sugar that has been well worked with a little white of egg and lemon juice; this is not an easy operation, but if the sugar is well worked before using, it will cover the paste more neatly than if used quickly; if sufficient smoothness is attained the sugar can be decorated afterwards with some harmless colouring, such as saffron or cochineal.
To make sugar eggs, mix one ounce of raw arrowroot with one pound of icing sugar, add the beaten whites of three or four eggs, according to size, and a teaspoonful of lemon juice; work the mixture well; use the egg shells as moulds and proceed as with almond paste, putting anything that is liked in the centre, and joining the halves together with white of egg; dry thoroughly, in some place not warm enough to melt the sugar, before you remove the shells. It is easier to take the halves off if they are slightly oiled before the sugar is sifted into them.
NOTES FOR APRIL.
It is very interesting in the spring to watch the gradual development of a frog from the egg, through the tadpole stage of its existence, till at last it assumes its final form.
The old frogs emerge from their winter hiding places in the mud, early in the spring, and during March their eggs may be found floating on almost every stagnant pond. A group of these eggs in their early stages of development looks like a mass of clear white jelly, containing numbers of black specks, each of which is really the germ of the future tadpole.