Then there was the wax fruit. You young people of sophisticated to-day, who make such things of real beauty with your skilful, kindergarten-trained fingers, what would you say to the wax fruit and flowers of our childhood? Perhaps you would like to know how to make them. We bought wax at the apothecary’s, white wax, in round flat cakes, pleasant to nibble, and altogether gratifying,--wax, and chrome-yellow and carmine, the colors in powder. We put the wax in a pipkin (I always say “pipkin” when I have a chance, because it is such a charming word; but if my readers prefer “saucepan,” let them have it by all means!)--we put it, I say, in a pipkin, and melted it. (For a pleasure wholly without alloy, I can recommend the poking and punching of half-melted wax.) Then, when it was ready, we stirred in the yellow powder, which produced a fine Bartlett color. Then we poured the mixture--oh, joy!--into the two pear or peach shaped halves of the plaster mold, and clapped them together; and when the pear or peach was cool and dry, we took a camel’s-hair brush and painted a carmine cheek on one side. I do not say that this was art, or advancement of culture; I do not say that its results were anything but hideous and abnormal; but I do maintain that it was a delightful and enchanting amusement. And if there was a point of rapture beyond this, it was the coloring of melted wax to a delicate rose hue, and dipping into it a dear little spaddle (which, be it explained to the ignorant, is a flat disk with a handle to it) and taking out liquid rose-petals, which hardened in a few minutes and were rolled delicately off with the finger. When one had enough (say, rather, when one could tear one’s self away from the magic pipkin), one put the petals together; and there you had a rose that was like nothing upon earth. After all, were wax flowers so much more hideous, I wonder, than some things one sees to-day? Why is it that such a stigma attaches to the very name of them? Why do not people go any longer to see the wax figures in the Boston Museum? Perhaps they are not there now; perhaps they are grown forlorn and dilapidated--indeed, they never were very splendid!--and have been hustled away into some dim lumber-room, from whose corners they glare out at the errant call-boy of the theatre, and frighten him into fits. Daniel Lambert, in scarlet waistcoat and knee-breeches! the “Drunkard’s Career,” the bare recollection of which brings a thrill of horror,--there was one child at least who regarded you as miracles of art!