The Three Old Maids
An item that makes for novelty and change in an evening’s performance is the following:—
Secure three young girls—I don’t mean kidnap them, but use your masculine powers of persuasion. (I find the majority of women folk need little when it’s a matter of dressing up and showing off to hilarious friends.) This is a digression.
Each damsel must have an old woman’s mask, the uglier the better, secured at the back of her head by means of elastics, which are easily hidden by her hair. She must wear a long skirt that conceals her feet, the back part of it covered by a small apron.
Her hands, in mittens, should be clasped behind her over a stick. To hide the edge of the mask, some fluffy headgear is essential, such as a lace fascinator with a rose or two fixed at the side, which is folded crosswise over the back of her shoulders and frames the mask.
Fig. 2.—The Three Old Maids of Lee.
Place the three behind a curtain. When all is ready—and the performers should take care to stand perfectly still, for fear of disclosing the masked profiles at the back of their heads—the curtain is drawn, and they sing to a pianoforte accompaniment a verse of “We are three young maids of Lee.”
The onlookers will probably designate this “pretty, but rather tame.” This is where the fun comes in, for no one is prepared for the grand finale. At the end of the verse the maidens step backwards in a row and retire behind the curtain, or turn round with their masks to the audience, their heads thrown well over the hands holding the sticks ([Fig. 2]). When they are ready the curtain is again drawn, and, amid shrieks of merriment, the last verse is sung by voices as cracked, discordant, and out of tune as possible—“We are three old maids of Lee.” The hands and heads should quiver with old age, the figures be bowed over the sticks. The result is ludicrous to a degree, and never fails to delight the unprepared audience.
I once saw an old dowager duchess, severe in full consciousness of war-paint and feathers, nearly burst the diamond snap of her necklace with laughing at the absurdity of the spectacle presented. Its great advantage is that it is cheap and easy, and can be performed without any rehearsing, by inviting three girls from the audience and spending a few minutes in instructions behind the scenes.
If you do not know them well enough to presume so far upon their good-nature, call up three chums of your own sex, array them in feminine apparel, and the result is even more ludicrous, if more expensive, for in this case you will require wigs to hide their cropped heads for the first verse, and dressing them will need more time.