Should your mother or sister be expecting a new spring bonnet, beguile the milliner into letting you have one of her nicest hat boxes, into which you should put your three years’ old Derby, and then watch the result.
A questionable joke would be to send a party invitation to your old friend, inviting him to an equally old friend’s house, and wait around to see him enter.
Tell John or Mary there is an oat for them at Mr. Blank’s. They thinking you have said “a note” immediately go to get it, and fully comprehend your meaning when they are handed a tiny package of tissue paper which serves as a covering to one oat and the words “April Fool.”
Arrange portières so they may be drawn on either side of a long mirror, as window curtains are drawn from the centre of a window. Before this make an effective group of a number of boys and girls. The rear ones should stand, the ones immediately in front should be seated on the floor. Above them should be written on a mirror these words, “April Fools.” When every one is in place, a boy standing on the left and right of the mirror should draw the portières.
A part of the refreshments for such an evening should be cakes frosted with salt and others stuffed with cotton, oranges filled with sawdust, tiny blocks of wood and small balls of cotton, covered with chocolate, so simulating chocolate caramels and creams. Have also motto papers deftly covering little pebbles, and iced coffee, which will be found to be the most acid of iced vinegar. But do not let your refreshments end with such a menu, or good nature even with the jolliest would cease to be a virtue; when a little fun is gotten, serve a delicious supper.
EASTER FROLICS.
The time for Easter amusement is during the week which follows Easter Day, and it would be a pretty idea at such a season to give a short tableau entertainment in connection with music and games, the tableaux indicating the superstitions of various countries.
When the tableau is shown, announce what it is intended to represent; for example, in Russia the Easter festival might almost be termed the “kissing festival,” for beginning with the Emperor, who on Easter Day kisses various generals and even privates in his army, the singular contagion spreads throughout the empire, apparently affecting both aristocrat and plebeian.
Tableau.—A boy representing the Russian Emperor kissing a member of the army.