1. Hiding the thimble. 1. Stage coach. 2. Bean bag. 2. Buzz. 3. Dominoes. 3. Elements.
THIRD EVENING. FOURTH EVENING.
1. Hot butter blue beans. 1. How, when, and where. 2. Jack straws. 2. Counting buzz. 3. Fruit basket. 3. Magical spelling.
FIFTH EVENING. SIXTH EVENING.
1. Go-bang. 1. Tea-kettle. 2. Spot on the carpet. 2. Musical chairs. 3. Throwing lights. 3. Logomachy.
SEVENTH EVENING. EIGHTH EVENING.
1. Telling a story. 1. Pigs in clover. 2. Blowing the feather. 2. I have a rooster to sell. 3. Authors. 3. Courtesying.
In teaching such games it is best to begin with the children, but the parents can {131} sometimes be induced to join in. Story-telling is also an unfailing resource in our efforts to amuse the children.
But, during a good part of the year, there are many outdoor games in which the children can be interested, and, now that the trolley cars have brought the country so much nearer, country trips for the whole family should be planned at frequent intervals. There are few things more pathetic than the dread with which many of our city poor think of the country, and to teach them country pleasures is to restore to them a birthright of which they have been robbed. A love of plants and window-gardening is another healthful pleasure. Mignonette, geranium, wandering Jew, and saxifrage grow well in small spaces. To one family, living in tenement rooms where there was no sun, a visitor gave a pot of geranium. Later, the woman said: "We have taken it out on the roof every day when it was pleasant to let the sun shine on it When I couldn't take it, Mary did; and, for fear it should get stolen, we stay and sit by it. I take the baby with me too, {132} and the baby likes the sun as well as the flower does."
With all the added interest in outdoor exercise, and the freer, healthier life of our time, we are slow to pass such advantages on to the poor. The women of the family need much urging, sometimes, to get them to take any outdoor exercise. Bicycles are becoming cheaper, and a bicycle would be a good investment in any family where all the adults are working at indoor occupations. If the visitor find a gymnasium not too far away, the boys and their father should be induced to go to it. With these added interests, a holiday will no longer be a thing to be dreaded by the wife and mother, for there will be interesting things to do, instead of mere loafing on the corner or at the saloon. One visitor helped to cure a man of drinking by getting him an accordion—a fact that has a touch of pathos, as indicating the poverty of interests in the poor fellow's life.