coloured calico form good ribbons for the Maypole. Bows and arrows are
easily made. It is also easy to cut one's fingers in notching the
arrows. When you are tired of dancing, you can be Robin Hood's merry
men, and shoot. When all the arrows are lost, and you have begun to
quarrel about the target, it will be well to hang up an old doll and
throw balls at her nose. Dressing-up is, at any time, a delightful
amusement, and there is a large choice among May-day characters. No
wardrobe can fail to provide the perfectly optional costumes of Mad Moll
and her husband. There are generally some children who never will learn
their parts, and who go astray from every pre-arranged plan. By any two
such the last-named characters should be represented. In these, as in
all children's games, "the more the merrier"; and as there is no limit
to the number of sweeps, the largest of families may revel in burnt
cork, even if dust-pans in proportion fail. If a bonfire is more
appropriate to the weather than a Maypole, we have the comfort of
feeling that it is equally correct.

It is hardly needful to impress upon the boys what vigour the blowing of
horns and penny trumpets will impart to the ceremonies; but they may
require to be reminded that Eton men in old days were only allowed to go
a-Maying on condition that they did not wet their feet!

Above all, out-door May Fun is no fun unless the weather is fine; and I
hope this little paper will show that if the 1st of May is chilly, and
the flowers are backward, nothing can be more proper than to keep our
feast on the 12th of May--_May-day, Old Style_. If the Clerk of the
Weather Office is unkind on both these days, give up out-door fun at
once, and prepare for a fancy-ball in the nursery; all the guests to be
dressed as May-day characters. Garland-making and country expeditions
can then be deferred till Midsummer-day. It is not _very_ long to wait,
and penny trumpets do not spoil with keeping.

But do not be defrauded of at least one early ramble in the woods and
fields. It is well, in the impressionable season of life, to realize, if
only occasionally, how much of the sweetest air, the brightest and best
hours of the day, people spend in bed. Any one who goes out every day
before breakfast knows how very seldom he is kept in by bad weather. For
one day when it rains very early there are three or four when it rains
later. But we wait till the world has got dirty, and the air full of the
smok