It is only indeed at the instigation of this trick that the real hazard begins. For a Play after all is only a Play, be it humorous, amorous, murderous, adulterous,—a soap-bubble world combusting spontaneously of its own effervescence. But life is life and starkly real if not essentially earnest. And the merest flicker of the merest eyelid in one of life's real emotions has short-circuited long ere this with the eternities themselves! It's just this chance of "short- circuiting with the eternities" that shifts the pucker from a Host's brow to his spine!
No lazy, purring, reunion of old friends this Rainy Week of ours, you understand? No dully congenial convocation of in- bred relatives? No conference on literature,—music,— painting? No symposium of embroidery stitches? Nor of billiard shots? But the deliberate and relentlessly-planned assemblage of such distinctly diverse types of men and women as prodded by unusual conditions of weather, domicile, and propinquity, will best act and re-act upon each other in terms inevitably dramatic, though most naively unrehearsed!
"Vengeance is mine!" said the Lord. "Very considerable psychologic, as well as dramatic satisfaction is now at last ours!" confess your humble servants.
In this very sincere if somewhat whimsical dramatic adventure of Rainy Week, the exigencies of our household demand that the number of actors shall be limited to eight.
Barring the single exception of Husband and Wife no two people are invited who have ever seen each other before. Destiny plays very much more interesting tricks we have noticed with perfect strangers than she does with perfect friends!
Barring nothing no one is ever warned that the week will be rainy. It is astonishing how a guest's personality strips itself right down to the bare sincerities when he is forced unexpectedly to doff his extra-selected, super-fitting, ultra-becoming visiting clothes for a frankly nondescript costume chosen only for its becomingness to a—situation! In this connection, however, it is only fair to ourselves to attest that following the usual managerial custom of furnishing from its own pocket such costumes as may not for bizarre or historical reasons be readily converted by a cast to street and church wear, we invariably provide the Rainy Week costumes for our cast. This costume consists of one yellow oil-skin suit or "slicker," one yellow oil-skin hat, one pair of rubber boots. One dark blue jersey. And very warm woolen stockings.
Reverting also to dramatic sincerity no professional manager certainly ever chose his cast more conscientiously than does my purely whimsical Husband!
After several years of experiment and readjustment the ultimate cast of Rainy Week is fixed as follows:
A Bride and Groom
One Very Celibate Person