It is very easy to get the material out of which this vase is made. You need only go to your wood-pile, or, if you have none, to the wood-pile of a neighbor. Choose a round stick four inches in diameter and eight or ten inches long, with a smooth bark. If you find the stick, and it is too long, you can easily saw off an end. Now comes the difficult part of the work: The inside of the stick must be scooped out to within four inches of the bottom. The easiest way of accomplishing this will be to send it to a turning-mill if there is one at hand; if not, patience and a jack-knife will in the end prevail. Next, with a little oil-color, paint a pretty design on the bark, if you can,--trailing-arbutus, partridge berry, sprays of linnea,--any wood thing which can be supposed to cluster naturally round a stump. Set the stump in a flower-pot saucer, filled with earth, and planted with mosses and tiny ferns; fit a footless wine or champagne glass, or a plain cup, into the hollow end, and, with a bunch of grasses and wild flowers, or autumn leaves, you have a really exquisite vase, prettier than any formal article bought in a shop, and costing little more than time and patience, with a touch of that rare thing--taste! which, after all, is not so very rare as some people imagine. Any friend will prize such a vase of your own making. A TABLE-COVER. A really charming cover for a small table can be made in this way: Cut a square--or oblong, as the case may be--of that loosely woven linen which is used for glass-towels, making it about four inches larger all round than the table it is meant to fit. Pale yellow or brown is the best color to select. Ravel the edges into a fringe two inches deep; then, beginning two inches within the edge, draw the linen threads all round in a band an inch and three-quarters wide. Lace the plain space thus left with dark-red ribbon of the same width, woven in and out in regular spaces, and at each corner tie the ribbon in a graceful knot with drooping ends. ANOTHER TABLE-COVER. This cover is made of pale-brown Turkish toweling. Cut a piece of the size to suit your table, and baste all round it, first a row of scarlet worsted braid, then of olive, then of yellow, leaving spaces each an inch and a half wide between the rows. Cat-stitch the braids down on both edges with saddlers' silk, and feather-stitch between them in silks, choosing colors which harmonize, and turning the whole into a wide stripe brilliant and soft at the same time. The choice and placing of the colors will be excellent practice for your eye, and after a little while you will be able to tell, as soon as a couple of inches are done, if you are putting the right tint into the right place. It is infinitely more interesting to feel your way thus through a piece of work than to follow any set pattern, however pretty, and it is far more cultivating to the taste. A PAPER TRANSPARENCY.