Part 7 (1/2)

Repeat a nursery rhyme.

Hold your hands behind you, and, keeping them there, lie down and get up again.

Hold your hands together and put them under your feet and over your head.

Walk round the room balancing three books on your head without using your hands.

Smile to the prettiest, Bow to the wittiest, And kiss the one you love the best.

Yawn until you make some one else yawn.

Push your friend's head through a ring. (Put your finger through a ring and push your friend's head with the tip.) Place a straw on the floor so that you can't jump over it. (Very close to the wall.) Put a chair on a table, take off your shoes and jump over them.

(Over your shoes.) Leave the room with two legs and come in with six. (Bring in a chair.) Repeat five times without mistake, ”A rat ran over the roof of the house with a lump of raw liver in his mouth.”

Repeat ten times rapidly, ”Troy boat.”

Ask a question to which ”no” cannot be answered. (What does y-e-s spell?) Shake a dime off your forehead. (The coin is wet and some one presses it firmly to the forehead of the one to pay the forfeit, who must keep his eyes closed. The dime is taken away, but the forfeit player still feels it there and tries to shake it off.) Repeat a verse of poetry, counting the words aloud. Mary (one) had (two) a (three) little (four) lamb (five).

Dance in one corner, cry in another, sing in another, and fall dead in the fourth.

Two forfeits may be redeemed at once by blindfolding two players, handing them each a gla.s.s of water, and bidding them give the other a drink. This, however, can be a very damp business.

The old way of getting rid of a large number of forfeits was to tell their owners to hold a cats' concert, in which each sings a different song at the same time. Perhaps it would be less noisy and more interesting if they were told to personate a farm-yard.

Auctioning Prizes

A novel way of awarding prizes is to auction them. Each guest on arrival is given a small bag instead of a tally card. These bags are used to hold beans, five of which are given to all the players that progress at the end of each game. After the playing stops the prizes are auctioned. Of course the person who has the greatest number of beans can buy the best prizes; so that besides making a great deal of fun, the distribution is entirely fair.

DRAWING GAMES

Many persons, when a drawing game is suggested, ask to be excused on the ground of an inability to draw. But in none of the games that are described in this chapter is any real drawing power necessary. The object of each game being not to produce good drawings but to produce good fun, a bad drawing is much more likely to lead to laughter than a good one.

Five Dots

All children who like drawing like this game; but it is particularly good to play with a real artist, if you have one among your friends.

You take a piece of paper and make five dots on it, wherever you like--scattered about far apart, close together (but not too close), or even in a straight line. The other player's task is to fit in a drawing of a person with one of these dots at his head, two at his hands, and two at his feet, as in the examples on page 48.

Outlines or Wiggles

Another form of ”Five Dots” is ”Outlines.” Instead of dots a line, straight, zigzag, or curved, is made at random on the paper. Papers are then exchanged and this line must be fitted naturally into a picture, as in the examples on page 49.

A good way to play Wiggles when there are a number of people to play, is to mark the same line for all the players, either by pressing down very hard with a hard pencil so that the line can be traced from one piece of paper to another, or with carbon copy paper between the sheets. Thus each person has the same line, and the one who uses his in the most fantastic and unexpected way is the winner. The only rule about making the line is that a circle shall not be made. The two ends must be left ready to add the rest of the design. It is well sometimes to limit the pictures to human faces, as this makes the grotesque unlikeness of the drawings all the more absurd.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIVE DOTS]

[Ill.u.s.tration: OUTLINES]