3. What man in this room is a model husband?
4. Who wrote Gray’s Elegy?
Hear! Hear!
This may be used as a penalty, but it is always wise to choose your victim with care. This victim is asked to stand before the other guests and then told to make a speech on some subject in which you are sure both he and the audience are very much interested. But—he is to take the opposition. For example, if he is a staunch Republican and most of the guests are Republican in sympathy ask him to say the harshest things he can think of about the Republican party. Or if he happens to be the Baptist minister, ask him to denounce the church; or if he is a man who is constantly boring his friends with tales of the wondrous deeds of his children, ask him to speak on “The Despair of My Life, My Children.”
The speaker is to pause after each statement, and everyone present must applaud loudly and call out “Hear! hear!” Anyone who neglects this little ceremony is in danger. The leader acts as monitor and announces that anyone whose applause is found to be unsatisfactory is liable to be the next one to be asked to make a speech. Here again the leader uses her judgment and cuts off the speaker just at the right time, calling for anyone she chooses as the next speaker, disregarding his assurance that he clapped hard!
With some groups it is mighty successful to use more personal subjects. For example, at a Methodist church party a man might be asked to speak on “Why the Baptist women are so much better looking than our Methodist women,” and the unfortunate Methodist ladies who would like to tar and feather him must clap their hands loudly and call out “Hear! hear!” In spite of their wrath, most of them remember to applaud, but Miss Brownleigh in the front row is laughing so hard, and is so busy shaking her fist at the speaker that she forgets all about her obligations and up on the platform she goes as the next speaker!
Scramble.
Ask everyone to bring his chair nearer to the center, to make a circle. Remove four or five chairs, the number depending on the size of the group, asking their previous tenants to come to the center of the circle. When the march time music begins, everyone must get up and start marching around to the right, those who are without chairs joining the line of march, no one touching a chair till the leader’s whistle blows and the music stops. Then it is up to everyone to get a chair or go into the middle of the circle. This is continued for four or five rounds.
Then the leader asks them to hippity-hop instead of march, at the leader’s whistle scrambling for a chair as usual. After three or four rounds of hippity-hopping they are to walk backwards instead, and for the last few rounds, they are to hop on one foot, and woe be unto those who are left in the middle at the end! Warn them of this, promising dire punishment, just before the last round, and you will have the funniest situation of the evening.