easily be
persuaded to come out of the house to act as judge.

Garden Shop

Shop in the garden or out-of-doors is played with various things that
resemble articles of food. Thus you can get excellent coffee from
sorrel, and capital little bundles of rhubarb can be made by taking a
rhubarb leaf and cutting the ribs into stalks. Small stones make very
good imitation potatoes, and the heads of marguerite daisies on a
plate will easily pass for poached eggs.

Flower Symbols

In this place a word might be said about some of the curious things to
be found in flowers and plants. If you cut the stalk of a brake fern
low down, in September, you find a spreading oak tree. The pansy
contains a picture of a man in a pulpit. A poppy is easily transformed
into an old woman in a red gown. The snap-dragon, when its sides are
pinched, can be made to yawn. The mallow contains a minute cheese. By
blowing the fluff on a dandelion that has run to seed you can tell
(more or less correctly) the time of day. An ear of barley will run up
your sleeve if the pointed end is laid just within it; and an apple's
seeds make exquisite little mice.

Summer Houses

If the garden has no summer-house or tent a very good one can be made
with a clothes-horse and a rug.

OUTDOOR GAMES FOR BOYS

This book is written for children who need help in amusing themselves.
It is natural that there should be some difficulty about thinking of
games for indoors, or when there is a problem of a large company to
amuse; but it is hard to imagine any healthy boy, turned loose out of
doors, who cannot take care of his own entertainment. The number of
things to do is without limit and the boy so uninventive as to be at a
loss with all outdoors before him must be in a sad way. Hence there
has been no effort made in this chapter to make an exhaustive list of
outdoor games, only those being given which are suggestive, that is,
which can be infinitely varied according to your ingenuity; which are,
so to speak, the first of a series.

Also, the rules of regular games are not given here (such as baseball,
football, hockey, etc.). There are plenty of small manuals, given away
with the outfits for these games, which print in much more detail than
would be possible here, their principles. More than that, most boys
absorb a general knowledge of these games through their pores, and
need a book only to settle some small, knotty, disputed