Tea Time
Half-past four will be found a good time for tea. Soon after five the healthiest hunger will have been appeased, and then, having “let digestion wait on appetite,” marshal your guests into the drawing-room and allow them to “fall to” to amuse themselves.
Let the revels be of the simplest. If there is one game children love more than another it is Musical Chairs, and as there cannot be a person living, who does not know that historic pastime, there will be no need to describe it in detail.
However, among your young guests you will be sure to find one or two boys who do not care to play the game, yet who can be made exceedingly useful in another way as “umpires.” Most boys of fourteen or fifteen have a great sense of honor when games are under consideration; let two boys, then, be the arbiters of the sport—let them decide whether, when the music stopped, Tommy found a seat before Johnny, or whether Billy was too rough when he pushed Mary aside and took the seat that should have been hers. You will have no need to grumble at the impartiality or the reverse of the young umpires.
After Musical Chairs, what better than Blind Man’s Buff, a game that never stales, made more exciting if “Buff,” after having caught a victim, fails to identify his prey, and must therefore pay a forfeit to be chosen by his captive? Children love forfeits.
Hissing and Clapping, Dumb Crambo, Acting Proverbs—there is no end to the games that children love. And let them choose their own. You will add a thousandfold to the success of your party if you allow your guests to please themselves, and by so doing you will give yourself far more pleasure than would be the case if you “fussed about” arranging, directing, ordering. Children love responsibility as much as “grown-ups.”
Above all, remember that “Boys will be boys.” It is only with the greatest tact that you will be able to eliminate the boisterous element, which will crop up now and again in the best regulated parties. If you can enlist in your services some jolly bachelor who loves children, and who can romp with them as a child, you will have solved the problem of keeping down the rowdy element. A man of this stamp can work wonders with an obstreperous youngster, can smooth out the creases in your handiwork, can keep things at concert pitch, and if at the end of the party he is a worn-out and exhausted wreck—being who he is, he won’t mind.
So seven o’clock comes. The time for farewells has arrived. Wraps and coats must be put on, and the little ones, flushed, excited, happy, are dispatched to their various homes.
“Thank you so much, it has been fun.” “We’ve had a ripping time, thank you.” “It’s been splendid.” Such thanks as these will repay you for three hours of babel and pandemonium, for all the forethought and tact you have brought to bear on a by no means too easy task.