A pretty feature is to have a pumpkin table brought in during the refreshments and hold a guessing contest, which gives an opportunity for much merriment and for the giving of prizes to the lucky guessers.
This table should be arranged as follows: Upon a small, highly polished table (mahogany is perhaps the richest in effect), place a dainty, embroidered centrepiece, and set upon this a large pumpkin, either on a silver dish or resting directly on the white linen. This pumpkin should be hollowed out, as the others, leaving only its yellow shell, the pumpkin holding an assortment of fruit, luscious and beautiful—highly polished red-cheeked apples, oranges, bananas and grapes; trailing here and there among them a few red leaves, or if they can be obtained, a spray of wild clematis, of bitter-sweet, or of smilax.
The guests are told that underneath the fruit lies something suggestive of nature's ways, and therefore of the occasion and that they are to guess what it may be and how much of it there may be.
The guesses will be many and varied. The fruit-dish may be passed, the fruit disposed of, and underneath will be found the pumpkin's seeds, which have been gathered together. The prize for the guest that guesses the nearest can be a little horn-of-plenty drinking glass. If one wishes to give souvenirs of the occasion, charming little pencils can be obtained that have the lead appearing from a miniature ear of corn. This feature, however, is quite unnecessary.
THANKSGIVING FOOTBALL DINNER
The following is a description of a novel dinner recently given a party of twelve football enthusiasts on Thanksgiving Day.
While the ladies were up-stairs removing their wraps, a maid came in with a tray on which were six wishbones, each having tied to it a knot of ribbon of one of the different college colors. Of these they were to take their choice, according to the college or university they preferred. Meanwhile the gentlemen down-stairs had been presented with ribbon rosettes, and as these matched the ribbons on the wishbones they easily found the ladies whom they were to take in to dinner.
When the company entered the dining-room they found that the decorations were in perfect harmony with the character of the game which they had just witnessed. Chrysanthemums, which are considered a necessary accompaniment of a football game, were everywhere. A yellow jardinière filled with ragged beauties in red and bronze stood in the centre of the table, while a single long-stemmed flower was laid beside each plate. There were also chrysanthemums in vases on the mantel and sideboard. The favors, or "mascots," of the dinner were small turkey-gobblers of papier-mâché containing the bonbons.
A feature of the dinner enjoyed almost as much as the feast itself was the novel form of the menus. These were written on two opposite pages of dainty booklets, the outside covers of which were decorated with characteristic football sketches accompanied by appropriate quotations. These were so unique and apropos to the occasion that each guest carried his home as a souvenir when he left at the end of the evening's entertainment. Instead of being separated into the usual courses, the menu was divided, like a football game, into a first and second half, with an intermission between, and was arranged to read somewhat like a football program, giving in outline the particulars of a game, the various terms and expressions in which described the names of the viands. The following is an illustration, except that in the original the names of the different articles were omitted, a word in parenthesis giving a hint where the meaning seemed doubtful:
First Half