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352 The Book of Indoor and Outdoor Games |
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the field" will please the young women—or German pipes and "bocks," manufactured for cotillion favours.
It is the girls who are clever enough to combine the sparkle of fun and merry aping of manners masculine, while not altogether relaxing the charm of femininity, who may be said to score the greatest success at a Leap-Year party; and the men, who, in the midst of frolicsome gaiety, never "go too far" and who prove that their gallantry and breeding is innate, will be remembered with favour when the Leap-Year is past and gone.
The especial privileges of the evening cease when the good-byes are said. At the door of exit Madam Grundy draws the line sharply between the sexes, and no self-respecting maiden will proffer her escort home to any youth, however timid and unprotected!
CANDLEMAS
It is the delight of a hostess to have the character of her entertainment suggested by special holiday occasions. It gratifies a sense of fitness when the Christmas dinner table is ablaze with holly and scarlet decorations —suggestive of cheer and joyous festivity. The Fourth of July imposes patriotic emblems, and the month of February is especially rich in gala days.
"Candlemas," falling on the second of February, lends itself to pretty and unique decorations, and its cele bration has the attraction of novelty for us latter-day holiday-makers.
It is a church festival that was observed by our remote forbears as conscientiously as Christmas. In its ecclesiastical meaning it is the feast of the Purification of the Virgin, the candle being a symbolic representation of the body of our Lord, its wax not made by human |
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