Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 February 1894 — FOR THE YOUNG FOLKS. [ARTICLE]

FOR THE YOUNG FOLKS.

A COASTING SONO. Hurry, scurry! Throuzh the snow, , Bobby's sled and Bobby go. In the storm or pleasant weather, Bobby and his sied together. Blow your fingers, stamp your toes, Don’t let Jack Frost nip your nose! Up the hill, and down again, Lots of fun for little men 1 —[St. Nicholas. LITTLE PEOPLE IN OTHER LANDS. If you were a German child of four years, yon would know how to weed your mother's garden without ever pulling up a flower or a vegetable, and yon would do it, too, for little German boys and girls are taught to work in the fields almost as soon as they can walk. By the time you were twelve years old you would be quite an experienced farmer. If you remained in Germany the law would require you to go to school ten mouths out of every year until you were sixteen years old, but during the vacations and holidays your parents would train you to work out of doors, onlv there would not have to be any force about it for work would have become a habit to you, and yon would enjoy it. A Japanese baby nevee learns how to creep; so if there is any truth in the old adage that you must “creep before you walk,” it is no wonder that they are not very graceful walker*. The poor, tiny tots are taught to begin walking on their hands and the soles of their feet, and when they sit they squat on the soles of the feet, which must be tiresome enough.—[American Agriculturist.

THE LITTLE PEOPLE FROM JAVA. In the great Dream City that stood last summer by the blue waters of Lake Michigan there were as mamy as 50,000 real inhabitants. To the visitor they seemed to be only a part of the scene: but to an inhabitant the visitors were the fleeting show, and he came to know aud to like or dislike his neighbors as their manners or his fancy gave him cause. Near the part of the city where I lived was a district inhabited by the little people from Java. Their streets were so clean, their houses so pretty, and they looked out on the stranger with such cheerful, timid smiles, that they soon won the hearts of their neighbors, and their coffee-house came to be a favorite gathering-place. When I first visited their streets, I inquired of a bright little woman who sat before a tiny loom on the portico of her house whether she spoke English. She replied quickly: “Na, na; no spik Inglis— all spik Chicago nax week”; and theD the little woman went on weaving a sarong, meanwhile singing softly to herself. A sarong is a piece of batik, or cotton cloth, about three feet wide by six feet long. It is used by the Javanese men and women as a kind of skirt, being folded about the hips and tucked in under a belt. But weaving a batik is only a small part of the work of making a sarong. Under another wide portico a patient, skilful woman sat drawing the most beautiful designs on the white cloth. First she made a border exactly like a backgammon board at each end of the cloth; then an inner strip of fantastic pictures of birds flying and spreading their wings; and then a maze of lines that seemed to get all tangled up, yet all came out in a regular figure in the end, just as the riders do at the circus when they all canter out dressed as seventeenth century cavaliers. The pencil with which this design was drawn should not, perhaps, be called a pencil at all—it is very different from the ones St. Nicholas’s artists use; it is a tiny bowl, about as big as an acorn, with a little curved spout, and is fastened on the end of a short bamboo handle. The bowl is filled with hot wax, which the woman keeps melting in a copper vessel over a charcoal fire. Every moment or two she dips the bowl in the vessel of wax, then blows in the spout, and draws a few lines before the wax cools. When the design is complete the cloth is dipped in dyes, and when dry is washed in hot water. Then all the wax lines come off, a white figure wherever they were traced,-for the dye cannot get through the wax. The most fantastic sarongs are made for the dancing-girls of the Royal Theatre of the Sultan of Solo. For them, too, the young Javanese girls embroider velvet bodices with gorgeous figures in colored silks.—[St. Nicholas.

THE DOLLS’ TEA PARTY. It was very bright in the nuraery. One could almost see to read by the moon’s rays coming in through the big windows. But it was midnight, and no one but the dolls were there, and, of course, they could not read. Elizabeth and Marguerite, two wax beauties, lay in their handsome beds. Their young owner had not taken the trouble to undress them, but they reposed under the covers, their eyes closed as peacefully as if they were properly robed for the night. Old Dinah, a battered, black doll in a turban, was stretched, face down, half way under the nursery lounge. Tim, a Chinese boy doll with an Irish name, stood propped up in one corner. Dot, a dainty bisque figure, with fluffy hair and a pink dress, sat in her own highchair. In the doll-house a family of china babies stood or sat or lay just where they had been left at teatiine. “Oh, oh,” sighed poor black Dinah as the cuckoo clock stopped striking twelve. She turned herself slowly over and sat up stiffly. “Hello! Time to have our fun,’’said Tim, stretching himself and walking out from his corner. At this all the dolls in the nursery started up and began to rub their eyes. “What shall we do to-night?” asked Elizabeth, to which Dot replied at once: “Let’s play tea.” The feast consisted of crackers and fruit from the nursery cracker jar and fruit dish, and a pitcher of water. They had a merry time, for each one told a funny story or some pleasant incident which the rest did not know about. “Now, isn’t this nice?” said Dot, with a sigh of delight. “Isn’t it better than a tea table, where your mistress props you up and you have to stay there and cannot say a word? I like night time better) than daytime, anyway, because then there is no one around and we can move and speak. I wonder why. it is against the rule for dolls to do that when people are by?” “I wish it would be night time for a whole year,” said one of the doll-house dolls. “Oh, what’s that?” “What’s what?” cried all the dolls, jumping from the table and .running around wildly. The door handle was rattled and then the door opened, to the dolls’ horror. A white figure, startling in the moonlight, came softly in.' It was the dolls’ mistress. Her feet were bare and her eyes

wide open, but she did not seem to see anything. She walked towards the lounge, stepping on Dinah as she passed. Then she stooped and picked up the doll, lay down with her on the lounge, drew the gray worsted afghan over herself, and did not move again. All the rest of the dolls remained petrified with fright, and when the nurse came in eariy in the mormng, before going to call her she was very much alarmed there. “She must have been playing dolls half the night,” she said, when she saw the table. “Poor lamb! I shan’t wake her until late this morning.” And she went out, carrying the little sleepwalker to her own warm bed again. “Oh, that was a narrow escape,” said Elizabeth and Marguerite in the same breath. “Suppose our mistress had been awake when she came inf We should have been punished, I am sure.” “It was a great scare,” said one of the little dolls. “But we deserved it for playing with what didn’t belong tous. I, for 6ne, will never do it again. ,r “Nor I,” agreed all the rest—[New York World.