“Why, didn’t you ever play it?” inquired Kate, with surprise. “It’s a real good game, if you have the right sort of players. The first player takes a slip of paper, and writes a line of poetry upon it—original or selected, just as he pleases. Then he folds the paper so as to hide the line, but he tells the next player what the last word is, and he must write a line to rhyme with it, and another line beside; and so they pass it around, until they have got enough, and then it is read aloud. It makes great sport, sometimes, I can assure you.”
The company generally assented to Kate’s proposal, and it was agreed, at the outset, that each line should contain eight syllables, every other one accented, commencing with the second. No other restriction was laid upon any one. Jessie was selected to commence the play, and she wrote the following line:
“How dark the day! how drear the scene!”
Doubling over the paper, she passed it to Oscar, and thus it went round the circle twice, Marcus finally winding up the poem with an extra rhyme, to give it a fitting conclusion. He then unfolded the paper, and read the contents aloud. Here is a copy of it. The figures indicate where it passed from one hand to another:
1. How dark the day! how drear the scene! 2. Now I do think you’re real mean To get me into such a scrape! 3. I sing the glories of the grape, Delicious fruit, so rich and nice. 4. Oh, I can do it in a trice— My lines are written—here they are, 5. Shining like evening’s brightest star, Or like the fire-bug’s milder ray! 6. This is a very rainy day, The walking, it is dreadful bad. 7. To find a rhyme I’m always glad,
“Now let’s write some cento verses,” cried Kate, after this had been read.
“What kind of verses are those?” inquired Otis.
“Don’t you know what cento verses are?” replied Kate. “Why, you take a number of lines of poetry from different authors, and arrange them together so that they will rhyme, and make some sort of sense—that’s the way to make cento verses.”
“Pooh! I don’t think much of that,” said Ronald.
“A person needs to have a good deal of poetry at his tongue’s end, to find amusement in writing cento verses,” observed Marcus. “Kate and Jessie have a poetical turn, and might succeed at it, but I am afraid the rest of us would find it rather hard work.”