Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 December 1874 — Winter Decorations. [ARTICLE]

Winter Decorations.

Those who desire to make their homes beautiful during the coming winter will now find many things in the woods which they can utilize. A month or more is yet given us for collecting the bits of color and graceful ferns which remain from the summer’s wealth. —. Foremost among the things which it is advisable to collect we would mention the ferns. Of course the green ones may be obtained at any season, bat in addition to these one can now find great tufts of umber, golden, yellow and tawny ferns. Some of the more delicate varieties will even be bleached oat white by the action of the weather and look like skeleton leaves. These contrast well with the others. All should be carefully pressed and dried before using. The grasses, which are even more attractive for winter use, require no special preparation; they dry of themselves. There is no limit to the variety and grace of these. Some hang in festoons of armpointed grains, some are like military pompons, some bearded or wooly, ana still others so delicate as to resemble smoke. In arranging a bouquet of grasses one is surprised to find how great is the range of color at his command. Thfi tints are not as deep as in flowers, but they are quite as pleasing. The sedges, many of them, may be used in the same way as the grasses. Any one living in the country is familiar with the beauty of the clematis. The vines clamber over shrubbery or hang lianes from the trees and are feathery with the silky tails of the fruit. They make a beautiful wreath about pic tures or mirrors. The common greenbriar, or wild smilax, has bright, shining leaves, often persistent through thewinter, and assuming beautiful bronze and purple and orange tints. It may be used like the clematis for garlands, and be relieved by its own blue berries or the scarlet ones of the so-called black alder. The white berries of the baneberiy strung on a crimson stem, the splendid coral clusters of the Jack-in-the-pulpit, and the hips of the rose are all to be collected. We should gather the everlastings of both kinds, and the bright green laurel leaves. Indeed, any of the tinted autumn leaves should be kept and used after pressing; but the laurel needs no care. It maybe used at once, and when it becomes old and unseemly it is always easy to replenish our vases. The mosses, lichens, and even sea-weeds are useful for very many purposes—as for the decoration of baskets, crosses, etc. Besides the pleasure of amassing material which is to be of use in winter and suggestive of the wdods, which we can no longer visit, is the delight of walking in these delightful days. Most persons do, not care to walk for the sake of the exercise merely, and if they can combine a useful and pleasant pursuit with walking they are much more apt to indulge in it. They can have no more delightful occupation than this which we have suggested.— W- W. Bailey, t» N. T . Independent. A negro of Baltimore has had a warning which, if it does not turn him from some ol the errors of bis way, ought at least to convey a wholesome lesson to others. He had been indulgingin strong drinks to excess and was enjoying a .cheerful attack of delirium tremens. One mprning he got out of bed and ascended to the roof to take an air-bath. Then he was seized with the delusion that the people in the street were trying to shoot him. To escape from them he jumped from house to house and ran along the combs of the roofs until the row of houses came to an end- He then dropped himself down a chimney out of the range of imaginary guns. He slid down the chimney until he became firmly wedged above a stove-pipe hole, and in that stove a fire had just keen built to cook breakfast. The negro now became impressed with the idea that he had reached the infernal regions at last, and howled accordingly, it was necessary to chop a hole in the chimney to release him ■ "V- . ‘ y ’y; ; . ■ —Mr. Grass tried to commit suicide in St. Louis the other day but was caught iu the haynous attempt. ,