As a relief from the all too-familiar sickroom paraphernalia, the patient's tired eyes will brighten at the sight of a small garden which changes or grows from day to day. These can be of chemical or vegetable origin, made up from simple, household materials.

Crystal Garden

Place two lumps of coal in a shallow glass dish. In another container mix one tablespoonful of salt with one tablespoonful of water to which a tablespoonful of bluing has been added, and pour this solution over the coal. In a day or so blue salt crystals will spread over the coal in an interesting, fairyland effect. For red crystals, add a few drops of mercurochrome instead of the bluing.

When the solution commences to dry up it can be renewed with a tablespoonful of salt mixed with a tablespoonful of water. This additional liquid must be added to the bottom of the dish, not poured over the coal.

Imitation Tank Fanning

Soak peas, com, or lima beans overnight. Then fill a glass tumbler about halfway full of shredded cotton which has been well dampened. "Plant" the pea or bean in the cotton with the eye downward. As the days progress, the seed will germinate, throwing out tiny white "rootlets" downward, provided the cotton is kept moist but not wet. If the season is right, the patient, when fully recovered, may be able to plant a well rooted com kernel in good soil outdoors, and someday eat a homegrown ear of com.

Flashlight Signaler

For the small patient whose illness is localized in the throat, rendering him temporarily and painfully mute, a means of answering "Yes" or "No" to questions, other than by head wagging, will often prove a welcome, or at least novel, relief. The basic requirement is an ordinary tubular flashlight, over which the neck of an opened paper bag is fastened with a rubber band. On one side of the bag a smiling face is outlined in crayon, representing "I'm feeling fine," or "Yes." On the reverse side are marked the downcast features of a child with a very sore throat which is greatly in need of an immediate application of ice cream, or who must reply "No" to some question.

Alec Smart

Once the patient's voice has been recovered, the flashlight may be removed from the paper bag, and a hole cut in the nose and in the mouth of the "happy" face through which the thumb and forefinger can be inserted from inside. Various types of noses will result, together with impudent tongue wagglings, somewhat in the nature of Greta Gabbler's sudden lapses.