Any bright girl can scribble off little jingles of this sort that will do very well for the plantain test, or appropriate quotations may be selected for the purpose. =Fortune’s Wheel.= Just where Fortune will fail each member of the company present is discovered in the following game: The entire party forms into a circle, standing about two feet apart; then a wheel or hoop is started around the inside of the ring, and kept going by each one giving it a gentle push with the hand, sending it to the person next in the circle. As the wheel goes around the players sing these lines, pronouncing a word as each player touches the wheel, as if counting out. Fortune’s wheel we speed along The while we sing our mystic song. Bring happiness, fame, power, and wealth, True love, long life, good friends, and health, Success in music, poetry, art, And with it all a merry heart. When the wheel drops at the feet of anyone as a gift of Fortune is being sung, or if they fail to strike it as it passes, or, striking, they send it into the centre of the ring instead of to their next neighbor, it denotes that Fortune will withhold that special gift from them, and they must leave the circle, for good luck has deserted them. The game continues until only one player remains, and this person, who has succeeded in keeping the wheel moving, is Fortune’s favorite, and will possess all the gifts the mythical Goddess can bestow. [Illustration] [Illustration: Starfish Portière] FOOTNOTES: [A] _Cicada_, commonly known among children as the locust. [B] Cannel coal is the best to use, for it is hard, will take a high polish like jet, and can be carved with a pen-knife. CHAPTER VIII. SEA-SIDE COTTAGE DECORATION. SIMPLY to enter a house is enough to start some people to planning how it can, might, or should be decorated. The love of beauty seems to be inherent in the feminine character, and it is the nature of most girls to make their surroundings as beautiful as circumstances will permit. Those who have taste and ability for decoration can see no barren or homely room without being seized with the desire to banish its uncomeliness, and substitute grace and beauty in its stead. The ordinary cottage at the sea-shore is a boon to such natures, for it is peculiarly well adapted to amateur decoration. Its ceiled walls offer plain, even, flat tinted surfaces for any kind of ornamentation, and the absence of plaster makes it possible to drive nails wherever it is desirable to have them. During a summer spent in one of these cottages on the coast of Maine, its many possibilities in the way of decoration were revealed, and personal experience has demonstrated that even the plainest of these temporary abiding-places is capable of being greatly beautified in a short time, and with materials usually close at hand, being obtainable from the fishermen and from the sea itself.