Colored cardboard, which can be bought at almost any stationer’s, is the best to use, but the slats of ordinary white cardboard may be covered with colored paper if more convenient. These fans may be varied to suit the taste of the girls who make them. Instead of a solid color, one can be made with alternate slats of red and white, blue and yellow, or any other colors that harmonize. Another may show all the tints of the rainbow, and for use on the Fourth of July one might display the red, white, and blue. [Illustration: Cardboard Fan.] Some will look especially handsome if prettily painted. A dark-red fan with a branch of dogwood-blossoms painted across it makes a charming wall decoration, as does also one of light blue with pine-branch and cone painted in brown or black. A gilt fan lightens up a dusky corner beautifully; it can be curved around to fit the place, and catching and reflecting the light at all angles, as it does, it is quite effective. [Illustration] [Illustration: AUTUMN.] [Illustration] CHAPTER XVII. ALL-HALLOW-EVE. RADIANT and beautiful October, whose changing color heralds the approach of winter, gives us our first autumn holiday, if Halloween can now be called a holiday. Before the Christian era, in the days of the ancient Celts and their priests, the Druids, the eve of the first of November was the time for one of the three principal festivals of the year. The first of May was celebrated for the sowing; the solstice on the twenty-first of June for the ripening, and the eve of the first of November for the harvesting. At each of these festivals great fires were built on the hill-tops in honor of the sun, which the people worshipped. When Christianity took the place of the heathen religion, the Church, instead of forbidding the celebration of these days, gave them different meanings, and in this way the ancient harvest-festival of the Celts became All-Hallow-Eve, or the eve of All-Saints-Day, the first day of November having been dedicated to all of the saints. [Illustration: Kaling.] For a long while most of the old customs of these holidays were retained; then, although new ceremonies were gradually introduced, Hallow-Eve remained the night of the year for wild, mysterious, and superstitious rites. Fairies and all supernatural beings were believed to be abroad at this time, and to exercise more than their usual power over earthly mortals. Because the fairy folk were believed to be so near us on Halloween, it was considered the best evening of the season for the practice of magic, and the customs observed on this night became mostly those of divination, by the aid of which it was thought the future might be read.