laimed,
"Look at it now!--it's on fire."

"Dear me!" added another, "it's got a mouth."

"And a nose."

"And a cheek."

"Oh, Deacon Merritt, eyes too."

There was a subdued chuckle down there among the lilac-bushes, as if
somebody were listening to all that was said by the growing crowd on the
front-door step, and another whisper went across the walk: "Clint, give
him his right ear. The left sticks. I'm afraid I'll pull him off the
post."

"There it is."

"Here comes mine too. Now for his crown. Jerk your half."

"Oh!" "Oh!" "Oh!" More than a dozen ladies of all ages said "Oh!" in the
same breath, and Deacon Merritt himself exclaimed:

"Capital! capital! The boys have done it. It's by all odds the best
jack-o'-lantern I ever saw in my life. It's a King Jack-o'-lantern."

EMBROIDERY FOR GIRLS.

BY S. H. W.

There is lying beside me on the table as I write a sampler, worked in
pink, green, blue, and dull purple-red silks, on which I read these wise
sentences, "Order is the first law of Nature and of Nature's God," "The
moon, stars, and tides vary not a moment," and "The sun knoweth the hour
of its going down." Below, inclosed in a wreath of tambour-work,[1] are
two words, "Appreciate Time." Under the first four alphabets (there are
five in all) comes the date, "September 19, 1823," and in the lower
corner another date, "October 24," when the square was completed, with
the name of the child who wrought it, long since grown to womanhood, and
now nearly forty years dead, but there recorded, in pink silk cross
stitch, as "aged eight years."

And these dainty stitches, set so exactly, assure me that the little
girls for whom I write are not too young to embroider neatly. Will you
let its two mottoes remind you that a few moments carefully used each
day will make you as good needle-women as your grandmothers were, and
that your work-boxes or baskets should be in such order that you can
find your thimbles in the dark, and can tell each several shade of wool
by lamp-light? But I leave you to apply the mottoes for yourselves.

If you are to begin work with me, will you buy a few crewel-needles, No.
5 or 6, and two or three shades of crewel of any given color, such as
old blue, dull mahogany, or pomegranate reds, or old gold shading into
gold browns? These are colors that will always be useful.

[Illustration: Fig. 1.]

First, your wools must be prepared so they can be used in making tidies,
or anythin