Sharpen your jack-knife, and you may start out top hunting, at once.
A beet makes a queer little top that will spin gayly for a day, and if it breaks on the sidewalk or curbing, why you may pull up another top from the beet patch in the garden. The picture shows you a beet top that looks like a very own cousin to a wooden top because it is just the same shape, and the same size. There should be a pointed peg whittled from a scrap of soft kindling wood and stuck in the pointed end of the beet. The beet top is then wound with a string that has a small button mold or a little china button on the end and when you throw it as you do an ordinary wooden peg top, it will spin finely. A small turnip will make a top, too, if it has a whittled peg, and a little radish makes a fine top, save that it is too small to be wound up and should have a bit of toothpick stuck in opposite the peg to twirl it by.
The woods as well as the garden are full of tops. Let us go out top gathering under the nut trees some fine, frosty morning, taking the heroic little jack-knife, too, to help finish the tops. Fat acorns make splendid tops. A bit of twig should be whittled down to the right size and stuck in the flat end of the acorn by which to spin it. Every acorn has a fine point upon which to spin and a half dozen of these gay little acorn tops may be set spinning at once by a group of children in a top contest to see which will keep twirling longest. Horse chestnuts may be used for tops, too, if a child selects the very round, flat kind of nut. Horse chestnuts gathered when they first fall from the tree are soft and easily bored with an awl or darning needle, or the smallest blade of a jack-knife. A hole should be made exactly in the center of the nut and a perfectly straight piece of twig inserted, pointed at one end and extending a half inch above the horse chestnut at the top to hold it by. Another way to make a horse chestnut top is to cut the nut in half, crosswise, and insert halves of toothpicks in each section, making two tops instead of one.
When the shut-in days come in the winter and it is too late to pick your tops out in the garden or gather them in the woods, it will be ever so much fun to see how many tops you can make of the materials you are able to find at home. The wood that is used in a cigar box is soft and easily whittled, and just one box will furnish material for countless tops. The queer little circus clown in the picture spins on the tips of his toes if a top string is wound about the long peg protruding from the top of his head. He is not one bit difficult to make. The outline of a clown in a picture book is drawn on a sheet of tracing paper with a soft pencil and then transferred to a piece of the soft wood. If a boy has a jig saw it will be very easy to cut the little outlined clown in a jiffy, but it can be done in almost as short a time with a sharp jack-knife. When the clown is cut, his features are drawn in with charcoal or a soft pencil. If you spin him hard enough, he will rise right up off the ground once in a while and then settle down again and go on spinning. If a child has a book of brownies he can make a brownie top in the same way that the clown top was made. The brownie will spin on the tips of his little pointed toes.