It is to laugh

by Edna Geister

Beans.

Beans are worth their weight in gold when one considers their fun-making capacity. There are several ways of carrying beans in a race. One of the most hazardous of these is to have contestants carry them between a pair of match sticks. Knitting needles are even more hazardous. Knives, too, are hardly the easiest thing in the world on which to carry several beans, especially when one is in a tearing hurry. Still another way is to carry as many beans as possible on the back of the left hand.

Whatever the means of carrying the beans from one place to another, in each case there should be three on a team, each team supplied with a pan of beans, all the pans containing the same number, this number varying with the utensil used. When match sticks or knitting needles are used, there should be no more than five or six beans to a pan, but there may be thirty or forty when the hand or knives are used.

Across the room from each team is an empty pan. At the signal for starting, the first one of each team starts carrying as many beans as he can manage across the room to the empty pan. He drops them into the pan and hurries back for more. When he has carried the last bean across the room, he runs back to give his knitting needle or knife or whatever it may be to the second one of his team, and this contestant is to run over to the full pan and start bringing the beans back to the empty pan in the same fashion in which they went across the room the first time. When he in turn has carried them all over he gives his implement to the third and last member of the team who is to finish the race by carrying all the beans back across the room once more. The team that first succeeds in getting all its beans across the room three times wins the race and all the beans.