Feathers.
Contestants are lined up at the starting line, each one provided with a plate on which there has been placed a handful of feathers kept in place by a saucer. At a signal they take the saucer off the feathers and start walking as fast as they dare the length of the course, some fifty feet, and return. Anyone who loses a feather must stop to pick it up and put it back on the plate.
A draughty hall is always a favorable setting for the feather race. Even on calm days, however, it is not an unheard of thing for someone on the sidelines, who is near a plate of feathers, to exhale rather strenuously.