This was the exception. For on this occasion everybody did turn up. And it started off like most parties; everybody was stiff and formal; I felt a terrible failure as a host. But in spite of Mr. Volstead there was a bit of "golden water" to be had, and it saved the day. What a blessing at times!
I had been worried since sending the invitations. I wondered how Max Eastman would mix with the others, but I was soon put at my ease, because Max is clever and is just as desirous of having a good time as anyone, in spite of intellectual differences. That night he seemed the necessary ingredient to make the party.
The fizz water must have something of the sort of thing that old Ponce de Leon sought. Certainly it made us feel very young. Back to children we leaped for the night. There were games, music, dancing. And no wallflowers. Everyone participated.
We began playing charades, and Doug and Mary showed us some clever acting. They both got on top of a table and made believe he was the conductor of a trolley car and she was a passenger. After an orgy of calling out stations en route the conductor came along to the passenger and collected her fare. Then they both began dancing around the floor, explaining that they were a couple of fairies dancing along the side of a brook, picking flowers. Soon Mary fell in and Douglas plunged in after her and pulled her up on the banks of the brook.
That was their problem, and, guess though we would, we could not solve it.
They gave the answer finally. It was "Fairbanks."
Then we sang, and in Italian—at least it passed for that. I acted with Mme. Maeterlinck. We played a burlesque on the great dying scene of "Camille." But we gave it a touch that Dumas overlooked.
When she coughed, I got the disease immediately, and was soon taken with convulsions and died instead of Camille.
We sang some more, we danced, we got up and made impromptu speeches on any given subject. None were about the party, but on subjects like "political economy," "the fur trade," "feminism."
Each one would try to talk intelligently and seriously on a given subject for one minute. My subject was the "fur trade."