Part 8 (2/2)
What kind of a s.h.i.+p has two mates and no captain? (Courts.h.i.+p.)
What is the difference between a mouse and a young woman? (One wishes to harm the cheese, the other to charm the he's.)
The souvenirs are square cards, on which are quaint pen sketches, and rhymes, each peculiarly adapted to the one that receives it, and, of course, more or less personal.
The ices are heart-shaped and the two maids who act as waitresses represent the Queen of Hearts, attired in dresses bedecked with hearts, and small crowns of hearts upon their heads.
Have a heart hung from the chandelier, the guests in turn being placed about eight feet from it, then request them to hold the left hand over one eye, raise the right arm even with the heart, and keeping it in that position, walk rapidly straight ahead and hit it with a finger, striking horizontally. It is declared easy to do until tried.
A VALENTINE TEA. 2.
Here are some contests for a valentine tea. Call on each one for an impromptu valentine. Award a book of rhymes for the best. Turn down the lights and require each man to propose to his partner. Prepare red cardboard hearts and write fortunes on them with baking powder and water. Ask each guest to select a heart and hold it to the fire when the writing will appear. Provide a fish pond with comic valentines. Provide a long table, sheets of fancy paper, flowers, pictures, paste, scissors and watercolors and ask each to make an original valentine. The game of hearts, the auction of hearts and the auction of valentines are old but excellent ways of amusing a company. For the auction of hearts the girls are in a separate room and a clever auctioneer calls off their charms and merits and knocks them down to the highest bidder, who does not know who he has bought until all are sold. A fancy dress party, each girl representing a valentine, is a delightful entertainment for the evening.
A small boy may be used for Cupid and blindfolded. He takes a man from one side of the room and presents him to a girl on the other side of the room.
CHAPTER IX.
A GRANDMOTHER'S TEA PARTY.
One of the newest suggestions for an original hospitality is ”A Grandmother's Tea Party.” If you have an ”at home” day, as every busy woman should, and you want to serve tea to your guests, offer it to them as it was offered fifty years or more ago.
First of all, collect all of your antique table service. Every family has some dear old treasures of the kind--tea cups, old linen, flower vases, silver epergns, etc.
You probably have somewhere laid away a wonderful old damask cloth which dates back at least half a century. Cover the table with this and scatter over it a handful of carnations, allowing them to fall at haphazard.
The centerpiece will be in the form of a huge cake placed on a high gla.s.s dish. This confection might be resplendent in a design of blossoms and turtle-doves carried out in variously tinted icings as the old-time cakes so often were.
On either side of the cake dish are placed tall epergns--veritable antique pieces built high with pyramids of fruit. Bonbons--they should be called sugar plums in this connection--must be old-fas.h.i.+oned sweets quaintly wrapped in fringed papers.
Often the tall gla.s.s lamps will also be procurable in a pattern of fifty years ago.
This will produce a thoroughly charming little table with a quaintness and a touch of femininity that everyone will enjoy.
The woman who is looking for a new way to serve tea on her day at home couldn't do better than to attempt this. It is easy to do; it costs little, it is pretty; it is feminine.
AN APRIL FOOL TEA.
Send invitations asking your guests to dress as foolish as possible. The hostesses costume can be combinations of several, as a decollete corsage, short walking skirt, one high-heeled slipper and one bedroom slipper, one side of her hair braided and hanging down and the other piled up high and decorated with feathers from the duster. Or she can dress as ”Folly” with pointed black velvet bodice, white blouse, red and yellow striped skirts, pointed cap and wear a small black masque covering the upper part of the face, and carry a stick wound with red and yellow ribbon with tiny bells fastened by ribbons. If you care to take the trouble and the expense (though it need not be very great), you can construct a maze or labyrinth by which the guests approach your door. Make this of frames of wood covered with sheeting, newspapers or heavy cartridge paper, and make as many turns in it as you choose. When the front door is reached have it fly back and display the sign: ”April Fool. Try the back door.” If you have a side entrance you can have a similar sign and prolong the agony. Have a dummy hostess at the back door and direct the guests to one or two wrong rooms before they reach the right dressing room.
Have a masked person standing at the door of the parlor as hostess. When the guest starts to shake hands, display the sign ”April Fool, I am not the hostess.” Have two or three hostesses before the right one is reached.
Have the room full of surprises in the way of decorations, cabbage heads and vegetables for bouquets, tin lanterns for lights, a den for stuffed animals and similar fakes.
No talking of any kind will be permitted for the first hour, though two or three notebooks and pencils can be displayed for those who feel they must express their thoughts. The examination of the ”fool” costumes will take place in deaf and dumb show. Give a bunch of onions tied with green calico for the worst costume.
Ring a big dinner bell at six o'clock and arrange one or two childish games to be played to fill in the time before tea or ask the guests to represent some noted character in pantomime, the others to guess which character is portrayed.
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