Some child customs successfully defy the law of the survival of the useful, and ignore the lesson of reason; they simply exist. A marked example of these, of bootless toil, is the laborious hoarding of horse-chestnuts each autumn. With what eagerness and hard work do boys gather these pretty nuts; how they quarrel with one another over the possession of every one; how stingily they dole out a few to the girls who cannot climb the trees, and are not permitted to belabor the branches with clubs and stones for dislodgment of the treasures, as do their lordly brothers! How carefully the gathered store is laid away for winter, and not one thing ever done with one horse-chestnut, until all feed a grand blaze in the open fireplace! At the time of their gathering they are converted to certain uses, are made into certain toys. They are tied to the ends of strings, and two boys, holding the stringed chestnuts, play cob-nut. Two nuts are also tied together by a yard of cord, and, by a catching knack, circled in opposite directions. But these games have a very emphatic time and season,--the weeks when the horse-chestnuts ripen. The winter's store is always untouched. From a stray burdock plant which had escaped destruction in our kitchen garden, or from a group of these pestilent weeds in a neighboring by-path, could be gathered materials for many days of pleasure. The small, tenacious burs could be easily wrought into interesting shapes. There was a romance in our neighborhood about a bur-basket. A young man conveyed a written proposal of marriage to his sweetheart reposing in one of the spiny vehicles. Like the Ahkoond of Swat, I don't know "why or which or when or what" he chose such an extraordinary medium, but the bur-basket was forever after haloed with sentiment. We made from burs more prosaic but admirable furniture for the dolls' house,--tables, chairs, and cradles: Traces of the upholstery clung long and disfiguringly to our clothing, but never deterred us from the fascinating occupation. To throw these burs upon each other's clothing was held to be the commission of the unpardonable sin in childish morals; still it was done "in holiday foolery," as in Shakespeare's day. The milkweed, one of our few native weeds, and a determined settler on its native soil, furnished abundant playthings. The empty pods became fairy cradles, and tiny pillows could be made of the beautiful silk. The milkweed and thistle both furnish pretty, silvery balls when treated with deft fingers; and their manufacture is no modern fashion. Manasseh Cutler, writing in 1786, says:-- "I was pleased with a number of perfectly white silken balls, as they appeared to be, suspended by small threads along the frame of the looking-glass. They were made by taking off the calyx of the thistle at an early stage of blooming."