An Autumn Supper.
Just before closing your cottage for the season, send out invitations to friends, asking them to spend an evening with you at your home. The invitations may be written upon scarlet maple leaves. When the evening for entertaining arrives the cottage should reflect the glory of the woods. Boughs and branches of silver and sugar maples decorate the hall, "den," dining room and kitchen, and berries, vines and burrs fill jars, vases and cornucopias of birch bark. In the rough stone fire-places, log fires burn. The guests go to the kitchen to make maple sugar creams, and while the candy is hardening, games are played and stories told. Each guest, blindfolded, must draw the outline of a maple leaf. Next, leaf shaped cards are distributed with the names of different trees written upon them, acrostically arranged. A nut race closes the games, and the prizes are then awarded. Then the company may gather around the fire. Bundles of lichen covered twigs, of pine cones and of twisted tree roots are selected according to individual fancy and put on the fire, each person telling a story, original or otherwise, until his bundle is burned away; the changing shapes in the fire suggesting many quaint fancies.
For table decorations have a garland of leaves encircle the polished top just outside the plates. A large wreath and a low bowl of nut burrs and sprays of bright leaves and berries make a gorgeous centerpiece. Have smaller wreaths around the bonbon and nut dishes, and mats of leaves laid under the plates and dishes and used for doilies under the finger bowls. A birch bark cornucopia of maple sugar candy and a droll little nut Indian clad in a scarlet blanket by each plate make pretty souvenirs of the feast. Leaves can be pasted on the candle shades which are made of stiff-buff paper:
| Roasted Quail on Toast, |
| Strawed Potatoes, |
| Salad Sandwiches, Maple Layer Cake, |
| Waffles, |
| Nuts, Coffee. |