If the staff-bearer laughed, he or she must take the chair; otherwise the next player continued the game.
A third amusement is for girls to excite one another to laugh by gently pinching in succession the ears, nose, lips, etc., while making use of some ridiculous expression.
This usage is alluded to more than three centuries ago by Rabelais.
In a Swiss game, this performance is complicated by a jest. Each child pinches his neighbor's ear; but by agreement the players blacken their fingers, keeping two of the party in ignorance. Each of the two victims imagines it to be the other who is the object of the uproarious mirth of the company.
No. 78.
Bachelor's Kitchen.
The children sit in a row, with the exception of one, who goes in succession to each child, and asks him what he will give to the bachelor's kitchen. Each answers what he pleases, as a saucepan, a mousetrap, etc. When all have replied, the questioner returns to the first child, and puts all sorts of questions, which must be answered by the article which he before gave to the kitchen, and by no other word. For instance, he asks, "What do you wear on your head?" "Mousetrap." The object is to make the answerer laugh, and he is asked a number of questions, until he either laughs or is given up as a hard subject. The questioner then passes to the next child, and so on through the whole row. Those who laugh, or add any other word to their answer, must pay a forfeit, which is redeemed in the same way as in other games.
Cambridge, Mass.
No. 79.
The Church and the Steeple.
Little girls, with appropriate motions of the closed fist, or of the inverted hand with raised fingers, say,
Here is the church,
Here is the steeple,
Here is the parson,
And all the people.