SCENE II
(Ruth seated with raffia work, enter other girls laughing.)
Kitty. Oh Ruth what do you suppose has happened?
Hope. Oh I couldn’t keep my face straight.
Hilda. It was perfectly awful.
Hope. I was scared.
Kitty. Scared nothing. The water was only a foot deep.
Ruth. Well won’t you tell a person what’s happened?
Hilda. Mercy Ruth didn’t you hear the screams yourself?
Kitty. Where were your ears?
Ruth. (irritated) You girls make me tired. Can’t you tell me what happened?
Kitty. Hope you tell.
Hope. Well Aunt Jane went down to the lake with Miss Morgan as she said she would. Then she took a notion to walk around it. That’s scene two. Scene three she saw a water lily near the edge that she wanted, and she reached for it and slipped in. The water was only a foot deep but of course she got wringing wet. She set up a S. O. S. call or whatever the latest wireless is and Betty and Lucille rushed to the rescue. First aid to the injured you know.
Hilda. Of course poor Aunt Jane was soaking wet, and then the question was what to do?
Ruth. Couldn’t you girls have gone to the village to get dry clothing from her suit case?
Kitty. Nix. For she had let the chauffeur go to Cherry Valley to see his mother.
Hope. Aunt Jane wanted a blanket wrapper, for of course Miss Morgan’s clothes wouldn’t fit her.
Hilda. Just imagine how hilarious it would be to see Aunty sitting around all day in a blanket wrapper and worsted slippers.
Hope. But Betty came to the rescue. She actually coaxed Aunt Jane to accept the loan of a middy blouse and skirt to wear for the rest of the day while her clothes dried in the sun.
Ruth. Miss Pickett in a middy blouse. Where’s my Kodak?
Hope. Oh we’ve all got to behave ourselves I can tell you, for if we don’t look out Miss Pickett will get so soured on camps, she won’t let Lucille even mention the word.
Kitty. I’ll tell you what we must do. Betty is dressing auntie up in camp clothes, and we must do our best to make her have a nice day, and convert her to the joys of camping. She’s mad as a wet hen now.
Hope. Well we’ll all try our best to rejuvenate her and give her a jolly day.
(Enter Miss Morgan, Miss Pickett, Betty, Lucille. Miss Pickett is dressed ridiculously in middy blouse, too small for her and a short skirt.)
Kitty. Why Miss Pickett how nice you look!
Miss Pickett. Nice in this scandalous costume! I’m glad that the Ladies Aid Society and the Civic club can’t see me.
Betty. Now Aunt Jane—excuse me—but I wish you’d let me call you that—believe me that red is becoming to you, very. Isn’t it girls?
Miss Morgan. And the costume is comfortable too.
Miss Pickett. Yes I admit that.
Kitty. I have a proposition to make, Aunt Jane. Can’t I call you that, too?
Miss Pickett. Why yes, you may if you wish.
Kitty. Oh lovely! Well this is my idea. You be a regular camper today, for we want you to see just what jolly good times we have.
Miss Pickett. Mercy sakes, do you want me to do high diving and walk ten miles, and eat fish blackened over a wood fire?
Ruth. Oh that isn’t camping. We lead the simple life, not the strenuous one.
Betty. I think it would be lovely for her to spend a day just exactly as we spend it.
Ruth. Go through the whole program you know.
Miss Morgan. Well, somewhat modified.
Hilda. Our first stunt is putting our tents in order.
Miss Pickett. Stunt!
Ruth. (explaining) Stunt means—well, a task, an accomplishment.
Kitty. Hope’s tent is the banner one. It’s all plastered up with mottoes.
Hilda. I was going to fix up Hope’s bed pie-fashion one time, and when I hesitated at the door, I saw her motto “Do it now” so I did.
Miss Pickett. I am sure I could pass an examination in orderliness.
Lucille. Aunt Jane is the most spick and span housekeeper you ever saw.
Betty. Well we can put down credits for that then.
Ruth. After tent inspection we have a wand drill, to make us graceful. Let’s have that.
Miss Pickett. Oh girls you must excuse me from that.
Betty. Come Aunt Jane, you’ll enjoy it.
Hope. It’s just the thing for sciatica.
Hilda. And for nervous dyspepsia.
Miss Pickett. Well I suppose I might as well be—
Betty. A sport.
Kitty. I’ll get the wands and you lead us, Miss Morgan.
Ruth. Lucille, you come on too. It’s the same drill we had at school.
(Wand drill, in which Miss Pickett follows awkwardly the motions of the girls.)
Betty. That is fine, you did splendidly. If you did that every day you’d never have nervous dyspepsia.
Kitty. Now while we rest we have half an hour for mending.
Miss Pickett. Why, do you girls sew up here?
Miss Morgan. Certainly they do. They keep their clothing all in good repair.
Miss Pickett. I quite approve of that.
Ruth. You should see us wash blouses too.
Hope. We go down to the lake and pick out a nice flat rock.
Kitty. Then we soak our blouses awhile and then scrub them on the rock with a nail brush.
Betty. And hang them up to dry on the trees—that old tree over there usually.
Miss Pickett. What a beautiful old oak. I wonder what it would say if it could speak.
Kitty. (quietly) It would probably say “I am a maple.”
Betty. Now we’ll consider our mending time done, and next is the swimming hour.
Miss Pickett. Never.
Lucille. I’m crazy to learn to swim Aunt Jane.
Betty. Why if you can’t swim you miss half your life and sometimes all of it.
Ruth. I was down at the swimming pool at home one day and Mrs. Brent, she is terribly rich you know brought down her little dog and told the man she wanted her dog to learn to swim. So the man took the doggie and tossed him into the pool and doggie paddled back, of course. Then the man rubbed him with a Turkish towel, and told Mrs. Brent that was the first lesson and the charge was fifty cents and to bring the dog twice a week for six weeks.
Betty. Let’s have the land practice Miss Morgan, the way we did when we were learning.
Miss Pickett. Land practice?
Miss Morgan. The girls are taught the motions of swimming before they go in the water.
Betty. Come on, Aunt Jane, this is good for sciatica.
Ruth. And nervous dyspepsia.
Kitty. Ready for practice girls, form in line.
(Girls go through land practice in swimming. Miss Pickett following awkwardly. This is a sort of gymnastic exercise. Girls wave arms in unison as in swimming, using the different strokes, lifting first one foot and then the other, with occasional kicks. Miss Pickett’s efforts to follow them can be made very funny.)
Aunt Jane. How unspeakably grotesque. I am certainly glad that my neighbors and the members of the Civic Club could not see me.
Lucille. I think it’s great. I know I could learn to swim real soon.
Ruth. But just see how much better you feel.
Kitty. Why you have a nice color in your face.
Hilda. And your hair is getting wavy all around your face.
Lucille. (aside) Half the morning gone and Aunt Jane hasn’t mentioned nerves. What’s going to happen?
Miss Morgan. Now I think our guest had better rest.
Betty. Why I was going to propose a hike. Let’s take a tramp to Blueberry Hill?
Miss Pickett. Dear me, do you have tramps here?
Miss Morgan. No indeed, a walk, Betty means.
Betty. A hike is the correct term. We pack up a lunch and then go for a little stroll of ten miles.
Miss Pickett. I believe in walking every day, and each morning I walk three blocks to market. The other morning a young bride was doing her buying, and I heard her ask the butcher for an eighth of lamb, as a quarter was too much.
Ruth. Mother heard a woman complain to the butcher that the lamb was a little spoiled and the butcher said “No wonder ma’am that lamb was a great pet of my children’s and I was afraid they’d spoil it.”
Betty. Well Aunt Jane, we can’t give you a credit for hiking on the strength of three blocks to the butchers’ but if you lived with us any length of time we’d have you a champion.
Kitty. We aren’t always so strenuous, Miss Pickett. We embroider.
Hope. And we do basketry, see what I’m making for mother.
Ruth. And we work with raffia, too. Isn’t this a pretty bag?
Miss Pickett. Your work is very creditable indeed. My mother when she was a girl made alum baskets and wax flowers, and wreaths from the hair of relatives, but these are prettier.
Lucille. That’s a compliment. Your basket is prettier than the camelias made from Aunt Susan’s back hair.
Miss Morgan. I think you girls are forgetting the most important feature of all.
Kitty. (counting on her fingers) Hiking, swimming, drill—
Betty. Dinner!
Lucille. I was hoping some one would mention that.
Miss Morgan. Ruth and Hope are the dinner girls this week.
Ruth. Well, we’ll try to do ourselves proud. (Exit with Hope.)
Miss Pickett. I confess I am hungry.
Hilda. Ruth is our star cook.
Kitty. She is economical too. She can make an omelet for ten people with two eggs and a bicycle pump.
Lucille. I smell lamb chops.
Betty. Yes the girls are broiling them in the cornpopper.
Miss Pickett. How resourceful.
Hope. (outside.) Mercy there’s a spider on the custard. Pick it out Ruth, I’m busy, for there are a dozen ants in the sugar bowl.
Miss Pickett. How dreadful.
Hope. (outside.) Oh my nice cream cake. A toad jumped right in the middle of the meringue. I’ll smooth it over, it will never show.
Miss Pickett. How terrible.
Betty. Don’t worry, Aunt Jane, the girls are only teasing.
Hope. (outside.) I guess we can serve now.
(Enter Ruth and Hope in caps and aprons.)
Hope. Dinner, ladies.
Betty. Aunt Jane, I heard your scoffing words about the prevalence of ants at picnic tables, and I can assure you that you will be the only aunt who graces our festal board.
Kitty. Aunt Jane, you look lots better than when you came this morning. Tell me honestly haven’t you enjoyed it?
Miss Pickett. I believe you have given me a very fair initiation into camp life.
Hilda. All but the hikes and watermelon picnics and campfire stunts.
Ruth. Well, those can be counted as a post graduate course.
Miss Pickett. I understand that camper Fire girls not only stand for neatness—
Kitty. Ruth, make a bow.
(Ruth bows.)
Miss Pickett. —and orderliness—
Hilda. Like mending our clothes,
Miss Pickett. —and courage.
Betty. That means me for rescuing you, Aunt Jane.
(Kitty fastens the top of a tin can to Betty’s blouse.)
Kitty. The Carnegie medal for heroism, my dear.
Miss Pickett. But also for kindly deeds.
Ruth. (aside) Those chops will be stone cold.
Miss Pickett. To finish my speech you are kindly helping me make. I believe that campers also stand for kindly deeds, so I wish you to remember me by one. (Turns to Lucille.) Lucille, my dear, with Miss Morgan’s permission you may spend the remainder of the summer here, and I will send at once for suitable clothes for you.
Betty. Three cheers for Aunt Jane.
(Campers give Wohelo call.)
RELEASED FOR AMATEUR PRODUCTION.
“The Little Politician”
By SEYMOUR S. TIBBALS
————
A COMEDY IN FOUR ACTS
SEVEN MALES AND THREE FEMALES
————
THIS play was produced professionally for several seasons under another title, and is now released for amateur production without royalty and without restrictions of any kind. The scenery and costumes are simple. Time, about two hours. A young society girl plays an important part in overthrowing a corrupt political boss and brings about the election of her fiance. The race for the hand of a wealthy widow by rival suitors furnishes the comedy. A pretty story is unfolded, but without actual love-making or any scenes objectionable to the amateur. Recommended for high schools and dramatic clubs.
The garden party in the second act affords opportunity for the introduction of any number of characters.
PRICE, 25 CENTS
———————————
Sent Postpaid on Receipt of Price by the
ELDRIDGE ENTERTAINMENT HOUSE
Franklin, Ohio
“THE HOUSE THAT HELPS”
WE ARE SPECIALISTS IN
Amateur Entertainments
It is not a side line with us, but we
devote our entire time to that business
Realizing that many people have grown weary of searching through catalogs and reading entertainments only to discard them as unavailable we appreciate the fact that our customers have often spoken of us as “the house that helps.” We have had practical experience in selecting and producing amateur entertainments and we feel that we know what will please the public, and what can be produced under certain conditions. Our experience is at your disposal. Write us, giving full particulars of your special need in the way of an entertainment, and we will select a play, an operetta, a drill or even an entire program for you. But always enclose a stamp for the reply.
Remember, that in addition to our entertainments we carry a large line of publications of other dealers. If in doubt as to the entertainment you desire, send particulars and we will suggest something to fit.
We are at your service.
ELDRIDGE ENTERTAINMENT HOUSE
Franklin, Ohio
TWO PLAYS FOR BOYS
By SEYMOUR S. TIBBALS.
————
Mr. Tibbals has been unusually successful in furnishing boys’ plays that introduce characters true to life. While the plays are strong and forceful in the lessons they teach, clean comedy predominates and the boys like them.
“The Millionaire Janitor”
A comedy in two acts. Here is a rollicking play for eight or more boys with plenty of action. Just the thing for a Boys’ Class or Junior Y. M. C. A. Easily staged and costumed. Opportunity for introduction of musical numbers and recitations. By introducing such features the play may be used for an entire evening’s entertainment.
Price 25 Cents
————
“Up Caesar’s Creek”
A splendid play for any number of boys. The characters are real boys and the play deals with their experiences while camping up Caesar’s Creek the performance closing with a minstrel show in camp. Costumes and scenery are not elaborate and the play may be produced on any stage.
Price 25 Cents
These comedies are protected by copyright, but permission for amateur production is granted with the purchase of the book.
————
ELDRIDGE ENTERTAINMENT HOUSE
Franklin, Ohio
Transcriber’s Notes:
Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
Page 3, “similiar” changed to “similar” (Morgan’s costume is similar)
Page 10, “Pickettt” changed to “Pickett” (Miss Pickett. Well, to)
Page 15, “propably” changed to “probably” (It would probably say)
Page 15, repeated word “is” removed from text (she is terribly rich)
Page 19, “Wahelo” changed to “Wohelo” (Campers give Wohelo call)
Back cover, sticker over word “BOYS” in title. Word found in another copy of the same ad.