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A BUDGET OF HOME-MADE CHRISTMAS GIFTS.

HINTS FOR GIRLS AND BOYS, LITTLE AND BIG.[1]

[Footnote 1: The present paper will enable our young friends to
make over seventy different articles for Christmas gifts. While a
few familiar things may be found among them, a great majority of
the objects are entirely novel, and are here described for the
first time. All who may wish for still further hints in regard
to home-made Christmas presents will find very many useful
suggestions in the paper "One Hundred Christmas Presents, and How
to Make Them," published in ST. NICHOLAS for December, 1875--Vol.
III.]

[Illustration: W]

Who is it that every year invents the thousand-and-one new and pretty
things which hang on Christmas-trees, and stuff the toes of Christmas
stockings? Who is it that has so wise and watchful an eye for the
capacities of little people, and the tastes of bigger ones, providing
for each, planning for tiny purses with almost nothing in them, as
well as for fat wallets stuffed with bank-bills, and suggesting
something which can be made, accepted and enjoyed by everybody, large
and small, all the wide world over? Who can it be that possesses
this inexhaustible fertility of invention and kindness of heart? No
ordinary human being, you may be sure. Not Father Santa Claus! He
has enough to do with distributing the presents after they are made;
besides, fancy-work is not in a man's line,--not even a saint's! But
what so likely as that he should have a mate, and that it is to her we
are indebted for all this? What an immense work-basket Mother Santa
Claus's must be! What a glancing thimble and swift needle and thread!
Can't you imagine her throwing aside her scissors and spool-bag to
help the dear saint "tackle up" and load the sledge? And who knows but
she sits behind as he drives over the roofs of the universe on the
blessed eve, and holds the reins while Santa Claus dispenses to
favored chimneys the innumerable pretty things which he and she have
chuckled over together months and months before the rest of us knew
anything about them?

This is not a fact. It can't be proved in any way, for none of us
knows anything about the Santa Clauses or their abode. There is no
telegraphing, or writing to the selectmen of their town to inquire
about them; they haven't even a post-office address. But admitting it
to be a fiction, it is surely a pleasant one; so