from Paris. This secured a pleasant drive both ways and one met acquaintances on the route.

There was an abbey at Longchamps and thither the fashionable saints would drive, in the quiet garb prescribed by good taste during Lent, but, the penitential season over, the toilets made that thoroughfare the place for all Paris to congregate to see the inauguration of the spring fashions.

The significance of the hare in connection with Easter is of German origin.

Instilled by nursery lore and very ancient is the belief of German children that on Easter eve a snow-white hare visits every household where the little folks have been "good, obedient, truthful and kind to each other" since the previous Easter. Timid after the nature of its kind, it waits until everybody is asleep and then softfooted it brings and secretes in odd, out-of-the-way places any number of wonderful coloured eggs that the children may find and enjoy on Easter morning. "Early to bed and early to rise" is the rule in nurseries of Germany on that particular night, the little Hanses, Gretchens and Karls in bed, but not asleep, waiting and watching for the beautiful and beloved guest, meanwhile wondering whether their conduct has been such as to merit visit and gift. Finally sleep triumphs, drooping lids close over dreamy eyes, and the "Easter Hare" comes and goes unseen and unheard as in former years. The day previous the mother goes to market as usual, and on her return, hidden under vegetables and household stores, are eggs galore, together with lengths of cheap, gaily coloured prints. These are very carefully guarded that they may not be discovered by the "kinderchen," thus spoiling their belief in the hare. In the kitchen late at night the loving parents wrap each egg in a piece

of print and boil them until dyed red, blue, green, or a variety of colours united. This accomplished, they are unwrapped and hidden in readiness for the joyous hunt in the morning. The children are up and dressed with the dawn, when the search begins-the entire family joining in the fun. Each egg discovered is with name attached as testimony to the good behaviour of the recipient.

A knowledge of the reason why we follow certain customs in connection with our gala days is certainly necessary to our intelligent observance of them. It has been said that "the world is very young for its age," and most of our holy-days have become mere holidays. Easter alone still holds its sacred character, and is the one day in all the year that educates and emphasises the duty of praise.

"It is a pretty fashion to be glad;

Joy is the grace we say to God."

A BUTTERFLY LUNCHEON

With Easter week comes a revival of social pleasures, and the lovely messages entrusted to the flowers on the preceding Sunday still lingering in their minds, some young girls planned an Easter luncheon, recognising no incongruity between so innocent an enjoyment and the lessons taught by the holy season.

The ancients regarded the butterfly as so perfect an emblem of the soul that in Greece the word "Psyche," which properly means the human soul, was used also to signify the butterfly.

These young girls then determined that these "flying flowers" should be the prominent features of their little fête. In the centre of the table, above a low, round basket filled with growing hyacinths-white, pink,

lilac, yellow-eight or ten little butterflies were apparently hovering over or lightly poised on the blossoms.

Made of Japanese paper, some white, some yellow, and about two inches across the outspread wings, they represented the most common species found in this country and usually seen fluttering in pairs-"twin souls"-in our lanes and byways. Attached to tiny spiral wires concealed among the flowers, they had the tremulous motion that simulated life.

A wide, pale-yellow satin ribbon was tied around the basket.

The candle-shades were of white crimped paper, with large yellow butterflies surrounding them; the wings, just meeting at the tips, were marked with fantastic. designs, and the little nervures slightly traced like the veinings of a leaf.

It needs but the most superficial skill in water-colour painting to decorate their wings, and every public library can furnish plates that are easily copied.

Since there are over three thousand different varieties, one could improvise the markings of a wing and hardly fail to find its counterpart in nature. The little bodies were mere tiny bundles of paper, divided so as to indicate the head, and the antennæ were of fine wire.

At the place of each guest was a little bonbonnière of yellow satin, upon which was poised a large butterfly, trembling on its wire as though just about to take flight. No two were alike, and each guest claimed to have been favoured in the one assigned to her, as across the wings, in quaint gilt lettering and in zig-zag lines, she read her own name.

MAKING BUTTERFLIES

An appropriate contest by way of entertainment after the luncheon would be the making of butterflies-

a favourite amusement of the art-students in Paris. To each person is given a sheet of note paper and a palette-knife, paper-cutter or silver table-knife, and each should have access to about a dozen tubes of colour-King's yellow, Naples yellow, flake white, ivory black, Prussian blue, cobalt vermilion, Venetian green, Antwerp blue, cerulean blue, burnt umber-are some of the shades that are most successful in depicting the tones of the butterflies' wings.

The scrapings of a palette, or various dabs of paint squeezed from the tubes taken at random, are transferred to the sheets of paper-say about as much paint as would cover the surface of a silver quarter. The paint is applied on the inside of the paper, near the crease where it is folded and exactly in the centre.

The papers are then folded together, thus repeating the dabs of colour and various markings, of course, in exact duplicate. They are then held against the window-pane, which permits the paint being seen, and with a clean palette-knife or paper-cutter one presses upward and outward, starting at the left edge of the folded paper, thus spreading the paint in that direction to form the upper and larger wing and outward and downward to indicate the lower one. The folded papers show the butterflies in profile, but when opened a great variety of them with spread wings is revealed-some of them wonderfully beautiful, the haphazard designs far transcending anything that one would probably have thought out with intention. Some made up entirely of several shades of blue and others of different yellows in combination are especially attractive. Sometimes, if the quantity of paint used be a bit in excess of the requirement, the tiny scales on the wings are represented. A body and antennæ may then be added to each