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122 The Book of Indoor and Outdoor Games |
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The hostess requests in her note of invitation that each guest shall send her on the day preceding the one appointed for their reunion the earliest photograph of himself or herself as an infant or young child that they may happen to have or can beg, borrow or steal.
This gives time to arrange them in a way to exhibit their attractions in most approved style—in frames of gilt paper hung about the room, or in openings cut in a vscreen of scarlet velvet paper covering a clothes-horse, which makes an effective setting.
Each picture is numbered, as in an art gallery, and catalogues with corresponding numbers, and with pencils attached, are given to the guests upon arrival, with the request that they write therein their guesses as to which person in the room each picture represents.
It adds to the fun if a name is found for each picture and it is catalogued by its name as well as number. At such a Baby-Show last winter one picture of an infant was called "Voices of the Night," the child's expression being suggestive. Two others, as companion pictures, were dubbed "Dignity and Impudence." Another, "A Home-Ruler," and for a pretty one Wordsworth's description was quoted, "The sweetest thing that ever grew beside a human door." One innocent, taken in its little night-dress, inspired the title "Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven."
When all have written their votes and guesses, and signed their names, the catalogues are collected by the host.
A prize is given to the one whose perspicacity or Yankee faculty for guessing has enabled him or her to name the originals of the greatest number of portraits, and a second prize to the one whose infantile charms have been pronounced by vote to be the most entrancing. |
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