Fun for the Household: A Book of Games

by Emma J. Gray

This person may continue the game, as did the previous maid, or she may say, “My lady is going to a reception to-night and wants her salts.”

The moment salts are desired some of the players must sneeze as if the salts were too strong, others should appear to faint, and others wave their hands forward and back as if fanning.

Any second that the lady’s maid may choose she may exclaim, “Change chairs!” and again there is another scramble, with one person left without, and there is therefore a new lady’s maid.

This maid may try yet another way, which will result in getting almost all of the players on their feet before they can change chairs. She asks the players to re-name themselves, and for nearly all of them to select articles of apparel.

Then the maid says, for instance, “My lady desires her white ivory fan.”

The person so named should rise, go two feet forward and, having bowed very low, should stand just where she is until the signal for change chairs is given.

The maid might then say, “My lady desires her white satin gown.” The person named white satin gown rises, and repeats the action of the one going before. And thus the maid continues to call, until having all the requisite articles of apparel. But when she exclaims, “My lady wishes her white kid shoes!” all rush for a seat.

Whoever is left without a chair after this method of playing must rapidly tell the bootblack story.

“As I was going down the street I saw two bootblacks. One was a black bootblack and the other a white bootblack, and both had black boots, as well as blacking and blacking brushes. The black bootblack asked the white bootblack to black his, the black bootblack’s black boot with blacking. The white bootblack consented to black the black boots of the black bootblack with blacking, but when he, the white bootblack had blacked one black boot of the black bootblack with blacking, he the white bootblack refused to black his, the black bootblack’s, other black boot with blacking unless he, the black bootblack, paid him, the white bootblack, the same as what he, the white bootblack, got for blacking other people’s black boots; whereupon, the black bootblack grew still blacker in the face, and called the white bootblack a blackguard, at the same time hitting the white bootblack with the black boot that he, the white bootblack, had already blacked with blacking.”