[THE PUDDING STICK.]
If you wish to entertain a number of young people on your birthday, Susie, why not have a spelling-match? This rather old-fashioned amusement combines pleasure and profit, and it has been a favorite diversion in drawing-rooms lately. Of course every person who possesses the slightest desire to be well educated will learn how to spell correctly, and an ill-spelled letter or note would, I hope, be an impossibility for any of my readers; and yet when good spellers are called upon in public they sometimes become confused and make droll mistakes. You may try this at the breakfast table to-morrow if you choose. Ask brother Tom suddenly to spell "polypetalous," or "madrepore," or "exfoliate," or "healds," or "septuagenarian," or "separate," or any other word you like, and unless he is a marvellously cool young gentleman, and as well a phenomenally clever speller, he will get a little mixed up over his vowels and consonants. At the breakfast table you will find that papa, and mamma, and the girl from Boston who is visiting your sister Ethel, and the neighbor who has just stopped in to tell how the invalid in the next house but two has passed the night will each and all be drawn into the game, and you will have a home spelling-bee soon started.
For a social spelling-match send out your invitations some days in advance. Ask an equal number of boys and girls, and make some preparations before the evening arrives. Your mother or sisters will help you in selecting a list of words from the dictionary, which should all be words in common use, not obsolete or specially technical words. Do not have proper names in the list. Do not avoid easy words. I have seen people stumble over "receive," and over "friends," and over "scissors," and "measles."
When the evening and the guests are together present, arrange the seats in two rows, lengthwise in the room, after the manner of the old district school. Let the referee sit at a small table at the top of the room between the heads of the lines. At the other end place the person who gives out the words. When any one misses a word he or she must change places with the successful one who spells it correctly. Those who miss three words must drop out, and words must be given opposing sides alternately.
Prizes must be given to the best and the worst in the class. Two of each if you like, or, if you prefer, only one of each. Light refreshments will be in order when the "bee" is over. About the prizes: do not make them expensive. Any small book, a cup and saucer, a photograph, a little picture frame, a silver book-marker, or a pound of candy will answer the purpose very well.
Another agreeable diversion for an evening is to select ten initial letters, first having given everybody a pad and a pencil. Any ten letters will do, as c, b, f, l, m, n, d, r, t, x, or any others you like. Five minutes are allowed, in which the party engage in writing telegrams, each successive word of which must begin in the alphabetical order of the letters given out. The reading of these telegrams is often very funny, and evokes shouts of laughter at the queer combination produced.
M. E. Sangster.
A baby's bath should be replete,
With all thats spotless, clean and sweet;
So every careful nurse will choose
The very purest soap to use.