Fans and Flowers For Spring

 

Description of Illustration: blue bonnet, lily of the valley, violet ribbon, apron, Victorian child, large palm fan, die cut, scrap for crafting, restored die cut, primrose, white feathers, pink silk fan, five petal yellow Ranunculus or Woodsorrel

• Read about how to craft fan folded palm branches here
• Learn how to make accordion fanfold paper dolls for your Easter egg tree here

"Speak not evil one of another." James 6:11.
scripture included.

Have a question about the illustration? Just type it in the comment box and I'll get back to you as soon as possible. I only publish content that is closely related to the subject folks.

When Easters Were Spent at Grandmother's House

        My grandmother's house on Easter Sunday was a wonderful place to be. It always seemed to us, her grandchildren, that the world began over again on that day. There was a newness and freshness about everything, from the first moment we opened our eyes to see our crisp, starched petticoats laid out, until the day was over and we put our Easter bonnets away in tissue paper.

The ''nest'' is symbolic for the home or a 
place of safe keeping.

       The details of her house and the way she lived in it are as clear today as they were 25 years ago. In all the years I have never found another home which seemed to emanate so many of the good things of life.

       By Easter Sunday the spring house cleaning was finished. And in New England that means that it was so well done that the place looked newborn. Window panes glistened, brass and copper shone, floors and woodwork were spic and span. On top of all this summer "dust covers" crackling with starch had been placed on every upholstered piece of furniture. Cross-bar dimity and ruffled marquisette bristled at every window with a cleanliness which was invigorating whether the sun shone or not.

       We arrived at the breakfast table in our Easter best. All of this had been laid out the night before, in perfect condition, for the start of church next day. Any one of us who had neglected to sew a button or mend a pocket on Saturday went to church unsewed and unmended, for grandmother's sewing basket went into the closet on Saturday evening and did not reappear until Monday for any emergency. The beautiful, well-planned order of it all is a happy memory after many years.

       We left the house, properly shod, coated and hatted, begloved and behankied, with a wonderful sense of well being. The older ones carried the Bibles they had acquired on previous Easters, the middle-sized ones would get theirs today, and the tiny ones would come home with a brightly blooming geranium, which meant they hadn't missed Sunday school all season. We came back to the house to find it full of wonderful odors. Returning to this house was always a joy. It was a refuge and peaceful haven always.

       On Easter afternoon, when grandmother had had her nap we all went for a walk. We called on the old ladies and gentlemen who were unable to get out in the sun for one reason or another. We brought sugar cookies which grandmother had made the day before, and tiny pots with three or four crocuses which she had started in the cellar months earlier. Year after year she went through the same rite. With 16 grandchildren it was never necessary that she make her Easter parade alone, for as the older ones became too self-conscious with this old-fashioned nonsense, the little ones were enchanted to be permitted to go.

       This type of home, all the activities which went on in it and the good things which came from it, we now understand better than ever. Simple, unassuming and well ordered, based on the fundamental needs of ordinary people, it has come into its own once again.  by Emily Post

• Tiffany O'Brien, The MOST Enthusiastic Homemaker
• How Do I? Talking about Etiquette, 19th Edition

The Easter Promenade

 

 

Easter Promenade
It's Easter in Washington, late though it comes,
So blare on the trumpets and beat on the drums,
And pin on the orchids so fragile and scentless,
The Easter paraders will move on relentless.
Three hundred and sixty-four days we've been striding
Because of an A card that won't permit riding,
But prop up our feet today? We will have none of it!
Easter's for walking-and just for the fun of it!
Forego that long hike and stay home to put soup on?
Conserve precious leather and 17 coupon?
Ah, no, let us join the Sunday morn marches.
Up with the chins, girls, and down with the arches.
On with the dress with the frou-frou upon it
On with the maddest of mad Easter bonnets.
Add all the touches to prove that we know style,
Watch for the cameraman-give him the profile.
For it's Easter in Washington-on with the strolling.
It's for the pedestrians bells will be tolling.
H.V.

Egg Rolling In Washington Over 100 Years Ago...

       March and April in Washington spell for the adult the perfection of a climate which at its best no capital on earth can surpass. Color, fragrance, and an almost indefinable sense that the appropriate necessary mood is one of languid leisure are pervasive. The spring odors and flowers seem suddenly to flood the gardens and lawns. In the tiny six-by-two bed under a bay-window and in the stretches of living green by the river the daffodils have succeeded the crocus; hyacinths and flaring tulips fill the borders, and even the stems in the hedges are full of color. Over every tree there is a smoky veil where the swelling leaf-buds have blurred the winter tracery of bare twigs against the sky, but are not yet heavy enough to cast a shade.

       Only the children seem energetic, especially on Easter  Monday, the great day for Washington babies. Along Pennsylvania Avenue they stream‚ well dressed, nurse-attended darlings mingling with the raggedest little poor children that ever snatched an egg from a market-basket. The wide street looks as if baby-blossom time had come, for there are hundreds of children who on this special afternoon storm the grounds of the White House for their annual egg-rolling. Long ago the sport took place on the terraces below the Capitol, and a visitor to the city then wrote:

       "At first the children sit sedately in long rows; each has brought a basket of gay-colored hard-boiled eggs, and those on the upper terrace send them rolling to the line on the next below, and these pass on the ribbon-like streams to other hundreds at the foot, who scramble for the hopping eggs and hurry panting to the top to start them down again. And as the sport warms those on top who have rolled all the eggs they brought finally roll themselves, shrieking with laughter. Now comes a swirl of curls and ribbons and furbelows, somebody's dainty maid indifferent to bumps and grass stains. A set of boys who started in a line of six with joined hands are trying to come down in somersaults without breaking the chain. On all sides the older folk stand by to watch the games of this infant Carnival which comes to an end only when the children are forced away by fatigue to the point of exhaustion, or by parental order."

       When the games proved too hard a test for the grass on the Capitol terraces. Congress stopped the practice, and the President opened the slope back of the White House. No grown person is admitted unless accompanied by a child, but even under this restriction the annual crowd is great enough to threaten the survival of the event.

This film of babies tossing eggs for Easter was made 

by Thomas Edison, over 100 years ago!

• A Unusual White House Tradition
• The Easter Egg Roll
• More Egg Rolling footage at Thrifty Scissors and see twins at White House egg roll from years gone by...

Tulip Table Settings for Easter/Spring

       Decorated crepe paper tulip cup cake holders and tulip favors may be happily arranged on this spring table trimmed for Easter. Yellow tulips are cut out and appliqued on the circular paper cover; the tulip border is combined with plain yellow paper for the runner and again appears in the hanging dome decoration. Fringe cut and then scalloped hangs between the border pieces on the chandelier decoration, and narrow streamers extend from it to the sides of the room.

A flower pot covered with two different colors of crepe, (stripes)
 and filled with paper tulips in which favors are attached,
makes this little display unique. These little coordinating
 accessories: potted tulip place holder and cup cake holders
complete the theme.

A sophisticated tulip arrangement for

 your Easter table from Bloomtube DIY.

More Ideas for A Tulip Themed Easter Table:

• The Easter Table...Tulips! 
• 33 Creative Easter Table Arrangements 
• Tulips at the Easter Table

Traditional Egg Games for Easter Parties

       The giving of eggs at Easter, or the spring festival, is one of the most widely-known, as it is also one of the oldest, of the customs associated with spring. From the remotest times the egg has stood to the Eastern nations as the symbol of the universe, and its breaking at that time as represented the opening of the new life of the year. the usage of interchanging eggs during the spring season has been referred by some writers for its origin to the egg games of the Romans, which they celebrated at the time of our Easter, when they ran races in an egg-shaped ring and the victor received eggs as his prize. The Israelites used eggs in their feast of the Passover long before the coming of Christ. In Persia colored eggs are presented at the celebration of the solar new year, and extremely ancient custom with this people.

      But to Christians the egg stands as the universal symbol of the Resurrection. There is a tradition that in Christian countries many hundreds of years ago the Church prohibited the use of eggs during the forty days of Lent, but as the heretical hen did not cease to lay a large quantity of eggs were found to have accumulated at the end of the period of abstinence. These were usually given to the children and in order to render them more attractive they were dyed with bright colors or otherwise ornamented. 

      A favorite game was to knock two eggs together, and whichever broke became the property of him who held the other. Of course, this would not profit the winner much if the eggs were in a fluid state, and out of this dilemma arose the custom of boiling them hard. In English folk traditions, the game is known as "shackling", "jarping" or "dumping."  As with any other game, it has been a subject of cheating; eggs with cement core, alabaster, and even marble eggs have been reported. 

      Egg rolling, or an Easter egg roll is a traditional game played with eggs at Easter. Different nations have different versions of the game, usually played with hard-boiled, decorated eggs. The pre-Christian Saxons had a spring goddess eostre, whose feast was held on the Vernal Equinox, around 21 March. Her animal was the spring hare, and the rebirth of the land in spring was symbolized by the egg. Pope Gregory the Great ordered his missionaries to use old religious sites and festivals and absorb them into Christian rituals where possible. The Christian celebration of the Resurrection of Christ was ideally suited to be merged with the Pagan feast of eostre and many of the traditions were adopted into the Christian festivities. In England, Germany and other countries children traditionally rolled eggs down hillsides at Easter this may have become symbolic of the rolling away of the rock from Jesus Christ’s tomb before his resurrection. This tradition, along with others such as the Easter Bunny, were taken to the New World by European settlers. 

Eastern roll eggs in the White House South lawn in 1929.

Easter egg hunt in Wuxi, Jiangsu (1934)

 

       Egg hunt is a game during which decorated eggs, real hard-boiled ones or artificial, filled with or made of chocolate candies, of various sizes, are hidden in various places for children to find. The game may be both indoors and outdoors. When the hunt is over, prizes may be given out for various achievements, such as the largest number of eggs collected, for the largest or smallest egg, for the most eggs of a specific color, consolation prizes, booby prizes, etc. Eggs are placed with varying degree of concealment, to accommodate children of varying ages. In South German folk traditions it was customary to add extra obstacles to the game by placing them into hard-to reach places among nettles or thorns. 

      It is the custom in most German families on Easter-eve to place candies and eggs in a nest and then conceal it in their homes or in their gardens in order for the children, who often rise at the break of day on Easter morning to delight in seeking the sweet treasures. The older boys and girls join in a similar egg hunt game, which of course, has its superstitions for lovers. There is a rhyme that accompanies this "lovers" egg hunt:

Draw the egg of violet hue,

Means friends fond and true.

Pink will bring you luck,

A lover full of pluck.

Gladly take the egg of green,

Good fortune soon will be seen.

Wealth and happiness with the egg of gray, 

Keep it and hide it safely away.

The egg of blue

Means lovers few.

Do not touch the egg of red:

If you do you'll never wed.

A lover this very night,

If you draw the egg of white.

You'll marry in another town.

If you choose the egg of brown.

        There were a variety of egg dances. In one version eggs are laid on the ground or floor and the goal is to dance among them damaging as few as possible and in a second version the goal was to roll an egg out of a bowl while keeping within a circle drawn by chalk and then flip the bowl to cover the egg. This had to be done with the feet without touching the other objects placed on the floor.

More Wearers of the Laurel

      A little while ago I made a row of little chaps (masculine chaps), the future "great," in all stages of wear and tear, lovable, and beloved I know, freckled and smooth and rough and clear (all good stuff, and to a woman's heart, cuddleable!) So come along a letter, a very dear letter, from a woman person, and says she: "Please, are there no little women-children who will one day be great also? You know better, so please don't leave them out."

      So here they are---woman's, woman! All in a row for you. And surely there are great among them. These little chaps (feminine). Little girls are dainty--so I cannot show you the grubby knees of them, the scratches and mars and bruises, the poverty, as I could on the little boys. But it's there most surely!

      Who could believe that crop-headed, boyish Sara, with the squint and the Teddy-bear, will discover more magic in the scientific world some day--something that will set the world by the two pricked ears! Barbara, with the steadfast gray eyes and the "er-plain face," who speaks at the Explorers club on the far places she has gypsied through, was once this little beauty with the pale brown curls, the blue baby-ribbon wound in them, and the frothy dress. Then she was a professional beauty! Julie, with the stockings that were knit to last, the old-fashioned apron, and the hair ribbon faded and glossed with the washings and ironings that have been its lof--Julia, with the gallent little smile--any one might dream here is a great comedienne! Cissy, with the boyish hair and socks, scuffed shoes and ravaged knees, all boy save her heart--becomes a great mother. And there are famous mothers--many.

      The mother of a great suffragette and orator, a woman with a silver tongue and voice of gold, brings out her baby picture. And lo! It's a bit of a girl with a blue slip, soft hands, soft face and demure, long soft, brown curls! Just a baby girl named Dorothy Jane!

      Here is Joan. Fat and smiling, dimpled and golden, clutching a flower with all her soul. A "snap"--the sun in her eyes and her hair ablow. The material in her slip is cheap and not new. But the light in her eyes is rich and alive to sound. And one day you will pay joyously your five or ten or twenty round dollars to hear her sing! And you will sit wrapped in a magic cloak, drowned in the diamond stream of her voice. And your eyes will ache with tears and your heart beat glad and sad. Just the same Joan wore blue-print and did it not cost very much!

      And Mary, the dreamer, with the slow, soft eyes and always the best love for her violet frock, the little girl with a lonely way with her, who saw the sunset in the heaven before she did the toy at her feet--a little chaser of hoops and obscure fancies--perhaps she'll paint and write and give great dreams to the world from the head under her thatch of fine dark hair. Who knows!

     Look into the eyes and heart of your little daughter--and wonder and reverence and be afraid. For something looks back at you of greatness and splendor! And if you will search and help--you may sense the dim glost-glow of Fame's halo 'bove her hair. by Nell Brinkley     

Music video by Jon McLaughlin performing Beautiful Disaster. (C) 2007 The Island Def Jam Music Group

Clownish Egg Heads

Faces flanking Bulf's are grade-A eggheads and cream of clowntown--each is the face of a real
clown. The wigs go on last as Bult finishes a head from a sketch on the far right. Never a clown
himself, Bult used to be a professional magician.

      The drollest collection of painted eggs in the world probably belongs to Stan Bult, curator of a London museum. Bult’s hobby is living part-time in the world of circus clowns—a habit he got into as a boy when a troupe of friendly clowns lived next door. The faces he paints on his eggs are authentic copies of those belonging to members of the International Circus Clown Club. As secretary of the European division of the club Bult keeps a file of faces so that clowns can avoid copying each other. Each clown’s make-up is his professional, jealously guarded property.

More Photos of Clown Eggs by Stan Bult:

• Clown Eggs
• The Clown Egg Register
• Clown Egg Registry

The Clown Face Registry of the United Kingdom...

How German Prisoners Passed the Time In 1917

Apparently, during WWI, German prisoners were easier to pacify than during WWII. These pictures of their craft activities were taken whilst they passed the time in a French prisoner camp.

PASSING THE IDLE HOURS German captives in France, in order to puncture the deadly monotony, spend their time making toys out of egg shells, paper, and bread crusts, for the peasant children.

THREE EXAMPLES OF OVO-ART On the left we have a Russian soldier ogling a bottle of vodka—the label on this bottle had to be translated twice in order to appear in English. On the right is the brother-in-law of Lewis Carroll’s March Hare.

GERMAN SOLDIER AND FRENCH PIG The censor has interfered with the explanation; we can only guess whether the artist would have called this pleasant scene “Pals” as a satire upon his living condition, or merely “The Commissary’s Delight”.

GERMAN SOLDIER WITH FRENCH CAPTIVE

BRITISH WARSHIPS BEWARE! This fiend of the seas is constructed of eggs, ink, paper, slue, and similar deadly materials.

 GENERAL JOFFRE, SIR EDWARD GREY (Note the horns), CZAR NICHOLAS

 A GERMAN AIR SCOUT

The Butterfly and The Bee by Nell Brinkley

Eleven-Thirty A. M. One gives her beauty and naught else--and there are those who say that is, enough to give a reaching world. 

-and-

Seven-Thirty A. M. One makes the world go 'round, washes babies and feeds men and they are those who say she is beautiful, too. --Nell Brinkley

Goodbye, Maytime; Hello, June!

Illustrated May Pole dance by Nell Brinkley.

       May's a jolly month, fresh out of her skins and winter burrow; she means primroses and woolly lambs and the end of misty rains; blue scrubbed skies with cottony clouds floating over, the far-coming of the pop-corn man; she's the wild maid in the story who burns winter's thongs away from your wrists and lets you out  into the sun again when you thought you'd die in darkness and cold, an yet when she goes we don't cry! That's because a lovelier lady follows--June. When Maytime slips out of our gate, looking back over her delicate shoulders, her primrose garments fluttering their last until another year; in at the same gate, brushing her very robe, golden and warmly scented and loaded with flowers, against pale May, comes June--singing, snapping her fingers, more tender of sky and air, mocking, bringing warm waters for the body that would a-swimming go, merry of eye, rich in color, May's lovelier sister.

      May promises things and gives us a peek at them--but June comes with a magic sack and an open palm.

      So that is why we dance May in and out again, and laugh at her farewell fete! by Nell Brinkley.

The Last of Summer by Nell Brinkley

I have cleaned this lovely cartoon butterfly girl by illustrator, Nell Brinkley. Brinkley has long since flown from the earth but her work is still just as endearing. If you'd like to see more of it, I could include a category here at this blog of her work only. She really was quite a popular artist in the early 20th Century. What do you think?

Nell Brinkley Says:

      Butterflies go with the ending of Summer ---butterfly girls go with the ending of the gay night that is their lives. Butterflies grow rare and at last do not flicker gold anywhere, when the sumac turns scarlet and the aspen on the far hills changes into little golden coins; butterfly girls vanish and are no more dimples and sparkle and laughter when there is no more fun to have, when the lights are out and real work comes. But I love a golden butterfly in the sun; and who doesn't joy to watch the butterfly girl dance her way through the sober faces and the earnest!

      Somebody said, " A butterfly lives but a day-- and what if that day is rainy!" So, little butterfly girl whose day is so short, may it be sunny and clear.

More About Illustrator Nell Brinkley:

• Biography and sample illustrated medallions by Brinkley

"The Butterfly's Ball"

The Butterfly's Ball Poem

On the smooth-shaven grass by the side of the wood,

Beneath a broad oak that for ages has stood,

See the children of earth, and the tenants of air,

For an evening's amusement together repair.

And there came the Beetle, so blind, and so black,

Who carried the Emmet, his friend, on his back;

And there came the Gnat, and the Dragonfly too,

And all their relations, green, orange, and blue.

And there came the Moth, with her plumage of down,

And the Hornet, with jacket of yellow and brown,

Who with him, the Wasp, his companion did bring;

They promised the evening to lay by their sting.

Then the sly little Dormouse peep'd out of his hole,

And let to the feast his blind cousin the Mole;

And the Snail, with her horns peeping out from her shell,

Came fatigued with the distance, the length of an ell.

A Mushroom the table, and on it were spread

A Water-dock-leaf, which their table-cloth made,

The viands were various, to each of their taste,

And the Bee brought the honey to sweeten the feast.

With steps more majestic that Snail did advance,

And he promised the gazers a minuet dance;

But they all laughed so loudly he pull'd in his head,

And went, in his own little chamber, to bed.

Then as evening gave way to the shadows of night,

Their watchman, the Glow-worm, came out with his light;

So home let us hasten, while yet we can see,

For no watchman is waiting for you or for me.

How You Wear Hat Key To Character?

Read a person's character by how they were their hat.

       

Character reading by hats is a new and interesting pastime...

• The girl or woman who wears her hat firmly and squarely is called the girl or woman who has determination and ability to do things and does them.
• The girl with a flabby hat set so it seems ready to blow off any minute is said to be of the butterfly variety, without aim or ambition. Hat at a dangerous angle means the wearer is liable to be fickle and to like flattery.
• She with the bonnet tilted back on her heard, according to fans in character reading by hats, is prone to self-indulgence.
• Then there is the secretive kind, hiding her eyes behind a curtain and pulling her hat down to her eyebrows.
• The girl who is continually rearranging her hat and primping her hair may have a fitful mind.

note: Now that we no longer wear hats often, people can never tell what our personalities are like by just looking at us.

What do you think these bonnets reveal?

from Abiana Studio

"The Realities of Two Worlds"

Here is an interpretation of the meaning of Easter for average men and women
 by Paul Jenkins: Has this ancient festival ever had any real spiritual significance for you?

TEXT--Jesus saith unto them, come and break your fast. And none of the disciples durst inquire of him, who art thou? knowing that it was the Lord.--John 21:12.

      Unless you remember the circumstances involved in the situation described in the text, its words will seem to you unimportant and meaningless, perhaps utterly absurd as the text of an Easter sermon. But if you remember the circumstances involved, those simple words will describe to you a situation that which you can find none more significant, more startling, more dramatic, more thrilling, more glorious, between the first chapter of Matthew and the last chapter of Revelation. 

      To bring the true situation before you, let me describe a picture of the scene, from the marvelous brush of the French master painter of the Christ so much of whose lifetime has been given to the production of those wonderful paintings of the life of Christ that have been the marvel of the artistic and the delight of the Christian world for more than a decade, And of all the hundreds of canvases the J. James Tissot has delighted to fill with charming, passionate, dramatic and spiritual depictions of movements in the earthly life of the Savior, that which shows the moment described in our text is one of his masterpieces indeed.

      The picture makes the hour of the scene to be, as we know that it was, the most charming hour of the loveliest season of the year, just as sunrise of a cloudless day in spring. Beneath the azure sky and clear in the sunrise glow of that hour, the lake of Galilee shines translucent from turquoise to pearl.

      Resting at the water's edge are the two boats, the large and the small, of which we read, simple and clumsy specimens of the boat builder's craft of that day. Oars, poles, and nets in them tell their use. Upon the pebbles lies a hastily discarded net, still damp and dark from the water, and close by lies the heap of splendid fish, fresh, wet, gleaming and silvery in the sun. The coals of fire glow ruddy in a little heap, and a tiny thread of opal smoke rises straight in the air of the windless dawn. On an outer garment, placed blanket-wise for him, perhaps by the tenderness of a disciple, sits the Lord. In even so simple a pose the noble and commanding presence of his personality is yet unmistakable. At his right hand lie heaped up a dozen flat cakes of the newly baked bread whose luscious brown almost suggests their fragrant aroma. On a simple split stick a fish is spitted, and the Lord holds it in one hand above the coals to brown, with the other hand moving in simple gesture and with uplifted face, as he speaks naturally, familiarly, and with most evident fascination to the spellbound men that squat in oriental fashion facing him across the fire. "Spellbound," did we say? You should see the picture to know with what divine power they are held. Motionless as statues, the most of them yet lean eagerly, amazedly, passionately forward, their eyes centered on his face as if no looking would ever satisfy the hearts that feed on the joy of seeing him, hearing him, participating in the heavenly marvel of the hour.

 

"J. James Tissot has delighted to fill with charming, passionate, dramatic and spiritual
 depictions of movements in the earthly life of the Savior."

 

      Such is the scene. I cannot know just what it means to you. But may I not tell you what it means to me?

      It has been my privilege, now and again, to sit as friend or guest at the tables of the rich, where snowy damask gave joy alike to the appreciative eye and the touching hand, where countless silver gleamed, where glass sparkled like the diamonds that is approached in value, and where the daintiest china of France supported fish, flesh and fowl of two continents and two seas. It has been my honor, and now and again, to sit at the tables of the great, where men of intellect and fame and women of intellect and charm have made an hour unforgetable and have taught one more than a whole university of mere classrooms could do. It has been my profit to sit at banquets where hundreds sat about the tables and listened to the worlds of heroes, heroes of war and heroes of peace, captains of soldiery and captains of industry, and felt the while they listened, that they were in touch with the men and the forces that move the world. It has been my benefit to sit at meat in the homes of the humble, in log cabins and huts, dining off metal plates and plain fare, and there to learn that not circumstances, but characters make men and women. It has been my delight to sit about the table of the grass, in forests and wildernesses, the campfire at hand and the viands won from stream or forest only by gun or rod. But when I contemplate the circumstances of that morning meal beside the lake of Galilee and realize the realities that were there present--things, emotions, sights, that surpass words to describe-- I know that I had rather have been one of those men that ate the bread that Lord baked, the fish his hands caught and cooked for them, that saw what they saw and heard what they heard, than to have attended any other banquet that wealth ever bought or meal that the friends of one's bosom prepared for friendship's tribute!

      "Why so? Tell me, who were there. Tell me whom that group consisted of!" "Oh, a group of coarse fishermen, fagged out by a night's work, listening to a chance rabbi who is getting breakfast for them while he talks." Yes; you can make that answer if you have succeeded in wiping Easter day out of your calendar.

      Who were there? "Oh, let's see, wasn't that the time when Jesus met his disciples and the miracle of the great draft of fishes occurred.?"

      It was one of many occasions of which Jesus shared fish with his disciples, I answer, and this is about the way the average churchgoer (shall I have to say the average Christian?) would answer.

      Who was there? Listen! Men were there that had seen the man in their midst die in pain on the horrid cross of a Roman criminal execution, had witnessed his writhings of agony had seen the sweat of blood, had heard from those lips at which their eyes now gazed as if enchanted the last scream as the body sank lifeless in the nail-suspended collapse of death. Men sat there who had taken that body down in tears and dismay and in the shock of disillusioned hopes had buried it and gone away feeling as if their universe had tumbled in wreck about their heads, murmuring to one another as they went: "And this is the end of him whom we hoped that it had been he that should have redeemed Israel!" And that man sat there before them alive! Alive? He had caught fish and made a fire and baked bread and helped them to make one of the great hauls of their fishermen's experience, and now while they at stunned, amazed, astounded, incapable almost of realizing what had occurred-incapable, as they afterward wrote, of speaking a syllable of inquiry--he calmly served and fed them while he talked to their white faces!

      "Oh, impossible, incredible! false, never to be believed! a myth, a lie, a dream, a delusion, a frenzy or fantasy of disappointed, overwrought and fanatical brains." Yes, and if you can think of any other terms of denial to write against it, set it down! And when you have said and done it all, the plain statement of these men who sat there will challenge you to your face to hear them tell you that it happened, that he whom they had laid in that sealed-up grave sat in their midst in the same body that they had known, and cooked for them and ate and served them as he catted the while! God be praised for heaven's sweet simplicity, that it was not in some awful, supernal shape, "trailing clouds of glory," that he came back to them, but that if was in the shape of the man whom they had known, had lived with, walked with, talked, slept and eaten with--and lo! before their eyes he moved and breathed and walked and ate and talked, the unmistakable and now incredible, but still actual being that he was before! Oh, if you will let these things, these truths, even this simple scene, get into your head and your heart--what an amazing Easter this day would be to you! "Why?" Because, I care not who and what you have been before, if you have never realized that mighty meaning of this simple scene, you may have known a dead Jesus, but you have never known the risen Savior!

      We have asked who were there? Let us take a final moment to ask what else was there? There, in that hour, all the mighty realities of the two worlds were gathered; this world of which they were catching faint but dazzling, astounding glimpses as they gazed on him; the world that he had been born in, lived in, worked in, died in--and the world that he was living in at the time that he ate and talked before their eyes!

      The realities of this world were there. Labor was there--they of the toil-worn hands, calloused by the wet net cords, they of the many a night of fruitless toil, they know what the weariness and uncertainty of labor is as few others know. Hunger was there, the meal that his love prepared to meet their famished bodies, doubly worn with abstinence and disappointment. Death was there, the end fo all earth--or why the meal to keep the body going, the labor for one's loved ones, and why the amazement at seeing one over whom the omnipotence of death had no power?

      And the realities of the world beyond were there. Life was there--such life as never a soul had dreamed of since Adam cowered beneath his sentence of mortality. The body was there; and now we know why it is called the "Apostle's Creed," that says: "I believe in the resurrection of the body!" What other faith, what other verdict, what other creed could they have that saw the nail marks in the hands that served him, who, though already in the life beyond so loved them that he could reward their work-a-day toil and could prepare for them the food that was affection's tribute itself. And the Christ was there!

      Language fails. Words can say no more. But this--all this--is the true Gospel of Easter day. Mount Vernon Signal.

 

LIFE’S DISCIPLINE A TRAINING FOR HEAVEN.
SIR HUMPHRY DAVY

All speaks of change: the renovated forms
Of long-forgotten things arise again.
The light of suns, the breath of angry storms,
The everlasting motions of the main,—
These are but engines of the Eternal will,
The One Intelligence, whose potent sway
Has ever acted, and is acting still,
Whilst stars, and worlds, and systems all obey;
Without Whose power, the whole of mortal things
Were dull, inert, an unharmonious band,
Silent as are the harp’s untuned strings
Without the touches of the poet’s hand.
A sacred spark, created by His breath,
The immortal mind of man His image bears;
A spirit living ’midst the forms of death,
Oppressed, but not subdued, by mortal cares;
A germ, preparing in the winter’s frost
To rise, and bud, and blossom in the spring;
An unfledged eagle by the tempest tossed,
Unconscious of his future strength of wing;
The child of trial, to mortality
And all its changeful influences given.
On the green earth decreed to move and die,
And yet, by such a fate,  repaired for heaven! 

Collecting Early Vintage Bunnies and Chicks for Easter

The following article is from the Ogden Standard, Ogden City, Utah. It was published on March 23, 1918.

War Time Favors Include Plenty of Easter Chicks

      Like good old Santa Claus, the Easter rabbit and the Easter chick admit a Teutonic origin, but one is sure that they --like the beloved folk of fairy lore ---have abandoned the land of their birth for a kindlier environment and will never more return. 

      At any rate children, the world over, will never let them go back. They are world-traditions now and may claim no special country. They belong to the realm of childhood and if grown-ups choose to get pleasure out of them, it is a vicarious pleasure at best and not to be compared with childhood's ecstasy. Watch any little boy or girl in front of a confectioner's window where enchanting bunnies and downy Easter chicks are displayed and you will have no doubt of the matter.

Poultry and ears of corn have a pertinent Hoover suggestion.
The rabbit poppin' out of the hat seems to say: "What Next?"

      There seems to be just as many rabbits and chicks as ever this year, white rabbits and gray rabbits and pretty brown and white fellows with pink bows standing up behind their pink-lined ears. The white cats are are fascinating too and are only less downy and soft then the baby chicks --some of them live chicks that scurry about in lively fashion. The little people love these bunnies and chicks mush better than the ambitious Easter favors, ribbon decked and candy filled, which please grown-up sister; and the modern child with an Easter brim-full of joy in bunny and chick gifts, misses not at all the  excitement of making Easter eggs that little folks of a generation ago found so thrilling and so satisfying. 

The very prettiest Easter
favors adhere to tradition
and present chicks, birds
and bunnies in spring-
like environment.

      Scraps of colored prints and calico used to be hoarded long before Easter time in preparation for the egg-coloring fun. The eggs were tied up in the gay colored cloths and boiled until hard. Then with their parti-colored shells and edible, hard-boiled interiors, they were piled on the breakfast table Easter morning. This is not one of the good old economical fashions to be bemoaned in later, more extravagant times; for dairy eggs served in such profusion, no matter how their shells were disguised with printed calico, would be a very very extravagant breakfast dish just now, and would doubtless cost more then a supply of bunnies and feathered chicks to go all 'round.

      Quite appropriate and Hoover-ish for this war-time Easter are favors representing one of the excellent vegetables recommended in a conservation diet.  Corn is also a patriotic food, since it saves wheat flour; and an attractive Easter favor of this year --respresenting an ear of corn and a feathered chick is pictured. Beside is is a cunning white Easter bunny with pinks ears, popping out of a top hat in suggestive magican manner. But it you lift the bunny out of the hat, you will find a store of candy.

      For a table center at Easter season is the pretty dove cote "Jack Horner." The tissue-wrapped gifts are hidden in the dove cote and each dove, perching on a bracket before a crepe paper covered window, has attached to his feet a long ribbon. When the doves are jostled from their perches their weight drags the gift tied to the other end of the ribbon through the crepe paper pasted across the window. The dove cote is one of the interesting crepe paper novelties, of which there are many new sorts this year. Pasteboard covered with crepe paper was used for the little house and the standard is of wood also covered with crepe paper, leaves and vines of crepe paper clamor over the dove cote and in the paper grass at its foot nestle two natural looking barnyard friends, a rabbit and a rooster. Another Hoover suggestion you see; for the injunction now is to eat roast, fried and fricasseed rooster in preference to hens which must be saved and coaxed to lay eggs for the Allies.

      Still another crepe paper novelty is pictured in the aeroplane which is quite a gem of its kind. Even the propeller is evident in this nicely balanced craft which is equipped with a formidable amount of ammunition in the way of "bombs" each "bomb" an Easter egg filled with candy. the intrepid pilot sits at the wheel, clad in a saucy uniform of checked silk gingham. Who would ever guess that the long, low rakish body of his craft is filled to the brim with gifts, each attached to a ribbon? When you seize one of the booms--the aeroplane being suspended from the chandelier over the supper table-- you pull the gift attached to your particular ribbon through the crepe paper cover of the aeroplane's body.

The Easter aircraft drop eggs instead of bombs:
 The gallant pilot wears a uniform
of saucy checked gingham.

      Very naturally, there is a war-time flavor in many of this year's Easter Novelties. Besides aeroplanes and observation planes, there are various sorts of artillery, even the cumbersome British tank being represented in a structure of pasteboard and crepe paper. And there are fighting men too. There are the useful favors too--practical gifts that may be tied up in tissue and white or daffodil ribbon and tucked into Easter Jack Horners. Of course, there is a war-time flavor to these also. The boy back home from camp for the Easter week-end will receive a sowing kit or some leather-bound contrivance for photographs, writing materials or the like: or his favor may be a pair of woolen socks, knitted by friendly feminine hands. Field glasses are valuable gifts and no soldier or sailor objects to receiving a well-used pair, in such demand are these glasses just now. For feminine guests there are jeweled service flags, photograph frames, lockets that will hold a picture of the special hero at the front, and of course, all sorts of knitting belongings--reticules, needle cases, bracelet wool holders and so on.

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The Two Greatest Festivals of the Christian World

      Easter, like Christmas, is a season of great rejoicing throughout the Christian world, writes George B. Catlin in the Detroit News. The two might be termed the alpha and the omega of Christian festivals, since one celebrates the nativity and the other the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ from death and the grave.

      As the early Christian records are fragmentary and imperfect it is impossible to determine when the celebration of Easter began. The early Christians of the church in the East were mostly converts from Judaism and these Christians continued the observance of the principal feasts and fasts of their ancestors, the ancient Israelites. 

      The death and resurrection of Christ occurred at about the time of the Passover, which Jesus and his disciples had gone to Jerusalem to observe. The Last Supper, held in an "upper room" of a private home in Jerusalem, by some authorities supposed to be in the home of the mother of St. Mark, was the Feast of the Passover.

      The only allusion in the New Testament that would indicate a very early observance of Easter, as a feast celebrating the Resurrection, is in the first collection of the letters of St. Paul to the Christians of the church in Corinth; fifth chapter and seventh and eighth verses: "Purge out the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, even as ye are unleavened. For our passover also has been sacrificed, even Christ: wherefore let us keep the feast, not with the old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth."

      In the subsequent records the first allusion to Easter is in connection with a dispute between two groups of Christians as to the date of the observance when, in the last decade of the second century of the Christian era, Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus, and Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, wrote letters to Victor of Rome, differing with him on the subject of the proper date for the feast.

      The crucifixion occurred on the sixth day of the week, or Friday. The following day was the Jewish Sabbath and the Resurrection occurred on the first day of the week. The early Christians of Jewish ancestry wished to signify their separation from their former faith, so, presently, they ceased to observe the Jewish Sabbath and made their holy day Sunday, the first day of the week.

      The Jewish calendar is based on the phases of the moon, having months of 29 and 30 days alternately. The days of the month in the Jewish calendar, therefore, change from year to year during a period of 19 years or the metonic cycle, at the end of which period the phases of the moon reoccur on the same day. A partial readjustment of the dates is achieved by introducing an extra or interciary month in the third, sixth, eight, eleventh, fourteenth, seventeenth and nineteenth years.

      The years having this interciary month are known as "embolismic" years. The length of the Jewish year varies from 353 to 385 days and because of this irregularity the Jewish new year may occur anywhere between September 5 and October 5. All other dates, including the Passover, are movable because of this peculiarity of the calendar.

      In 325 A. D. the date of the Easter feast, in dispute because of calendar and religious differences, was finally settled, but this did not obviate all difficulties. Because of the imperfections of the Julian calendar days of the month and year began to fall behind. By the year 1582 the calendar was 10 days behind and the vernal equinox, supposed to fall invariably on March 21, fell upon the 11th. This caused difficulty in fixing the correct date of the Easter celebration reformed calendar was invented and adopted.

      This festival was always preceded by a fast of some duration. At first the fast began on Good Friday and continued for 40 hours. A little later it was extended to three days and later still it was extended to a week known as Holy week, during which there was general abstinence from flesh meats. The first mention of the fast, corresponding closely to our present Lenten period, occurs in the fifth canon of the council of Nicea in which it is styled "the quadrigesima" or 40 days.

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• Date Conversion
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• Jewish Calendar with Zmanim - Halachic times and date converter chabad.org
• Jewish calendar scientific explanation at the NASA web site
• Jewish Encyclopedia: Calendar
• Karaite Holidays Karaite website
• Hebrew Calendar Dates and Holydays (Diaspora or Israel) for both the Traditional and the Rectified calendars
• Hebrew - Gregorian Calendar with options
• Bet Ha Bracha Hebrew Calendar
• A Hebrew calendar with Halachic times, at Yeshiva.org.il

Hebrew Date Converters

• Jewish Holidays Online - List of all Jewish holidays for the current year (or any given year) .
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• Sample VB.Net and Javascript code to convert the Hebrew Date to the Gregorian Date at the Wayback Machine (archived November 25, 2007)
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• Lisp calendar calculator which accompanies Dershowitz & Reingold's Calendrical Calculations 3rd ed. Click "Ancillary materials" tab.
• Hebrew/Gregorian converter, including a full Hebrew calendar.
• Hebrew/Gregorian Calendar converter, including a full Jewish Calendar.

The Easter Egg And The Easter Hare...

Bunnies should use caution when
prepping their eggs.

      The Easter egg and that ubiquitous little Easter hare that defies all the natural laws governing mammals are well known to childish fancy. What child has not discovered on Easter morning a whole basket of beautiful pasque eggs and just missed the sight of the little Easter hare that laid them? He is almost as familiar a household personage as Santa Claus. Long hours have the children watched in the woods for him, only to go home and find they have just missed his visit there, and there are those beautiful eggs he left behind, in pink, pale blue, yellow and all the colors of the rainbow, some of them parti-colored, some painted with roses and some tied with ribbons. Of late years this enterprising little animal has gone far as to leave china eggs filled with bonbons, and that he leaves them there is no more doubt than that Santa Claus comes down the chimney on Christmas Eve, and who is so disloyal as to doubt that?

      There are various ways of preparing Easter eggs that give so much delight to little ones. The most elaborately decorated eggs should be emptied and washed of their contents before they are prepared. This is the most economical as well as the most satisfactory way to do: Pierce a small hole through each end, blow out the contents, wash the shells and leave them for several days to dry. Some eggs shells may be gilded, some silvered and some painted in oils. Simple gifts such as are suitable at Easter time may be conceded under these eggs.

      Plain boiled eggs, such as are served on the Easter breakfast table, may be easily dyed with vegetable dyes, which can be procured at caterers or dealers in confectioner’s supplies. It is not in good taste to make these eggs eaten at the breakfast table especially elaborate. The elaborate eggs are those which are supposed to be found incidentally after breakfast, on Easter morning, and are for the amusement of small children. A dish of pale green, white and yellow eggs at one end of the table or robin’s egg blue and pale yellow and white at the other end gives the breakfast table a festive appearance. It is easy enough to prepare a few eggs in each of these colors to obtain this effect. It is a little difficult to get a good green in eggs. Owning to the quantity of lime in the shells all eggs do not take this natural green color as some others will, and it is better to color eggs a simply as possible than to use any powerful dyes when eating them later.

      It is possible to decorate more ornamental eggs of which the contents have been blown out. Eggs may be prepared weeks before Easter and may be hidden away until the eventful morning. These simple eggshells when decorated in natural colors using roses or forget-me-nots and each strung on a fancy ribbon will last a long time, if taken care of.

      The eggs of nearly all ordinary birds, from the gigantic ostrich, whose shell is firm enough to be set in silver, to the smallest bantam, where at one time represented in many shops at Easter time. These were decorated, to hold various kinds of candies or for ornamental purposes. You will net to be diligent to find decorative eggs like these in antique shops or vintage resale in time for Easter if you live in the United States, for it is nearly impossible to find these mouth-blown, decorated eggs for sale. When my children were young, there was a chocolate shop down the street that sold these but that was highly unusual.

How to blow out an egg from Modernmom

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"The Little Lamb" tract

      The Religious Tract Society, founded 1799, 56 Paternoster Row and 65 St. Paul's Chuchyard, was the original name of a major British publisher of Christian literature intended initially for evangelism, and including literature aimed at children, women, and the poor.

      The RTS is also notable for being the publisher of the Boys' Own Paper and Girl's Own Paper.

      The founders were of the same type of evangelicals who founded the London Missionary Society and the British and Foreign Bible Society, for example David Bogue.

      The society started by publishing tracts, but rapidly expanded their work into the production of books and periodicals. Their books were mostly small but did include larger works such as the multi-volume Devotional Commentary and the massive Analytical Concordance to the Bible of Robert Young.

      From the 1860s, the Society began publishing novels aimed at women and children, providing a platform for a new generation of women writers, including Rosa Nouchette Carey. 

      In 1935 the RTS merged with the Christian Literature Society for India and Africa to form the United Society for Christian Literature (USCL). In 1931, there was a change of imprint to Lutterworth Press for all RTS publications intended for the home market.

Cover of the tract.

 The Little Lamb

Showing how it wandered, how it suffered, and how it was saved by the Good Shepherd.

London: The Religious Tract Society

The Little Lamb.

* * * *

      A friend of children, who loves them very much, one day went to see a school of infant orphans. He had been to visit them before, and had talked with them, and they knew him again. When he came into the schoolroom, their eyes looked bright, and they were very glad that he was come once more. Then they marched in a row, and went into another room, where there was a gallery, on which they were soon seated.

      Their friend talked to them kindly. He asked them about many things. He spoke to them about the Bible, and the good and true things in it. He gave them some short rhymes and verses, of which they were very fond, and they said them after him. He then told them some little stories about children, and about good men and women, and about many things which God had made and given to us. There was one story that pleased them very much, and as other children may like it too it is put in print that they also may know what he said about it.

A young shepherd by plays of flute while watching a flock of sheep.

 

 The Little Lamb

Showing how it wandered, how it suffered, and how it was saved by the Good Shepherd.

   
      There was a Little Lamb that lived in a very beautiful green field, 

Where flowers blow, and streams flow. 

      He was under the care of a very kind Shepherd, and was kept quiet safe. The little lamb ran about among the grass and played there, glad and happy. There were many other lambs, and they were never angry, they never hurt each other; but they all lived in peace and love.

      One day the little lamb of which we speak ran away from the rest, and went to the end of the field. All round it there was a bank and a hedge, to keep the flock from going astray. The little lamb went up to the top of the bank, and looked through the hedge. Everything seemed very pretty on the other side; there were many fine plants and the  

The little lamb leaves his flock.

birds were singing in the trees, and there was a large broad path that seemed to lead to some green fields beyond.

      For many days the little lamb went to the bank, and looked through the hedge. Then he did not seem so pleased as before with his own field, 

Where flowers grow, and streams flow;

but he wanted to go on the other side, and to run in the broad path.

      After some time, he looked about along the hedge to try and find a hole through which he might creep, and then go just a little way on the other side, and soon run back again. After looking a long time he found a hole in the hedge. He put in his nose, and then his neck, and then part of his body, when a sharp thorn give him a prick on the breast that covered it with blood. He pushed it aside, and went further in, when many thorns pricked his face, and his back, and his feet, and made his eyes almost blind. He ought to have gone back, but he saw a place where the hedge seemed thinner, and he pushed towards it. It was hard work; the wool on his back was torn, and he was hurt all over; but at last he got through the hedge to the other side. He now seemed glad, and rested on the grass, and heard the birds sing, and looked 

The lamb sees a storm brewing.

round and saw what a wide country there was all around, where he could rove about from place to place.

      The little lamb then rose, and went into the broad way: he found that it led into many other paths, and he ran on into one and another, and into a great many more paths. He seemed glad for a time, but as the sun was setting he wanted to get back again to the field,

Where flowers blow, and streams flow.

So he tried to find his way back again, but the more he went from one path to another he seemed to get further and further away. He was quite lost, lost. He then lay down under a tree, for he was very tired, and oh! how he wished that he had never gone astray! Then it began to get dark. The clouds were very heavy, and the rain fell fast, and a great storm came on. The lightening began to flash, and the thunder to roar, and the limbs of the little lamb shook with fear. The tree under which he lay was struck by the lightning: 

he was only just able to run away before it came down upon the place where he had rested. Some of the branches fell on his back as he was going away, and gave him great pain.

     The little lamb now ran into a thick wood, and tried to find shelter there. The night soon came on; not a star was to be seen; all was dark, dark. The lamb was cold and wet, hungry and weak. He knew not where to go or what to do.

      In the dark night the little lamb heard the cries of wild beasts. Then a great lion roared aloud, and came nearer and nearer. He saw the little lamb and soon came near to him. Oh! how did he shake with fear! He rose and tried to run away, the lion was about to spring on him, when, lo! the little lamb fell down into a deep and narrow pit. The lion stood over the pit and roared and lashed his tail. The lamb fell to the bottom of the pit, among thorns, and mud, and creeping things. Oh! how did he suffer! His wool was torn and dirty, his body was full of pain, and the lion was

near him. There the lamb lay, and his cries became more and more faint, and he seemed ready to die.

      While the lamb was going astray, the kind Shepherd, on walking round the field, missed him. He saw the foot-marks, and found the hole in the hedge, and some of the wool left there, and knew the sad state of his little lamb. He then took his crook in one hand, and a lamp in the other, and went after the lost one. When he came into the dark wood he stopped, for he heard the faint cries of the little lamb. He then ran to the pit. The lion saw him and his lamp, and turned round an ran  away, for he was afraid of the Shepherd. The cries of the little lamb had almost died away when the Shepherd came near. By the light of his lamp he saw the lamb, and spoke kindly to him. Then with his rod and with his crook he drew the little lamb out of the dirty pit.

      The kind Shepherd then took the little lamb, and washed him quite clean, and put oil on his wounds, and bound them up, and took him up in his arms and carried him in his bosom. Oh! how happy was the little lamb now! When he heard the lion and the wild beasts roar, he clung

the closer and closer to the arm and the heart of the kind Shepherd, who bore him back to the field,

Where flowers blow, and streams flow.

      Now the little lamb no more wished to go astray. He loved to keep near the Good Shepherd, and was safe and happy in his fold.

* * * *

      When the kind friend who had thus spoke to the children had done, he and they had a great deal to say to each other. He first of all asked them "Who is like the little lamb?" Several said, "We are sir." He stopped as if he wanted some other answer, when at last a little girl added, "I am sir." He then said, "That is right, every one should feel that he or she has gone astray like the little lamb." Then he taught them, a line at a time, to say this text after him:

"All we like sheep have gone astray;

We have turned every one to his own way;

And the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all."

      "Yes," said he, "Jesus Christ bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that is, the cross. Oh! how we ought to love Him who saw us going astray, and came to seek and to save the lost."

      Then they talked about the naughty ways of the little lamb. How he wanted to get out of the field. How he would not go back when the thorns pricked him; like children, who know what is right and do what is wrong. And of the lion, and the text which says, that Satan, "as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour." And of the cries of the little lamb, and how the kind Shepherd was so quick to hear him, and how the true Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ, is always ready to hear all who pray to Him.

Satan, "as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour."

      Then their friend asked who was like the kind Shepherd, when many little tongues said, "Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd." "Yes," he said "you are quite right; and now say these words again after me.

"He shall feed his flock like a shepherd;

He shall gather the lambs with his arm,

And carry them in his bosom." --Isaiah 40:11

      The little orphans said these words over and over again. Then their kind friend said, "Yes, my dear children, Jesus is the Good Shepherd; and you all know how he took little children in His arms, and put His hands on them, and blessed them. And He is now ready to bless you, my dears. He is as kind now, He is in heaven as when on earth. And let us never forget that Jesus Christ said, "I am the Good Shepherd: the Good Shepherd giveth His life

The Good Shepherd carries his lost little lamb.

for the sheep," John 10: 11. And He did give up His life on the cross to save us. We must believe on Him, love Him, and obey Him.

      "Now let me add, that Christ, after He had died for us and rose again, and before He went back to heaven, said unto Peter, "Feed my lambs." Oh! how kind He was! Oh! how kind He is! How we should love Him!

      "Now, my dear children. I have been trying to feed you little lambs before me, and to lead you into green pastures and beside the still waters, so I hope you will all try to think of what I have said and taught you from the Bible."

      It was past school-time, and play-time was come, but the dear little children wanted their friend to stay longer: he did so; and they had much to say to one another. As he left the room, the eyes and faces of the little ones seemed to say, "We hope, sir, you will come to see us again.   

Jesus welcomes the little children.

The 

Green Pastures.

"The Lord is my Shepherd;

I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures;

He leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restoreth my soul;

He leadeth me in the paths of righteouness for

His name's sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the

shadow of death.

I will fear no evil; for Thou art with me;

Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me."     

The Little Lamb.

O Lord, our Shepherd, deign to keep

Thy little lambs, Thy feeble sheep,

And when our feet would go astry,

Uphold the guide us in Thy way.

Our Shepherd Jesus, kindly gave

His precious life, the flock to save:

Oh may we hear and know His voice,

Ans in His love alone rejoice.

When faint and trembling with alarms,

Oh gather us within thine arms:

Kind Shepherd, on They gracious breast

The weakest lamb may safely rest.

Lead us to pastures rich and green.

Where Thy free bounties most are seen;   

There may Thy gentle waters roll,

To cheer and save the fainting soul.

Thus blest, though we should walk the vale

Where death's deep shadows will prevail,

We shall our heavenly Shepherd see,

His rod and staff our comfort be.

Surely Thy goodness and our praise

Shall fill up all our fading days;

Then dying, gather us above

              To Thy own fold, the heaven of love.