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512 The Book of Indoor and Outdoor Games |
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a squirrel hunt for nuts, which were concealed in every-available place in the room.
It was explained that a peanut counted one point in the game, a gilded peanut ten, a pecan nut two, a filbert three, an almond four, a hickory nut five, a walnut ten, a gilded walnut twenty, a walnut containing a bit of paper foretelling one's fortune, twenty-five, a chestnut bur fifty, and a cocoanut a hundred.
Ingenuity had been taxed to the utmost to find unsuspected hiding-places for the nuts, and the chase became exciting when the discoverers of the gilded nuts, for instance, were obliged to remove many wrappings of tissue-paper before the "find" could be appraised—then the walnuts to be examined lest a glued specimen might be overlooked—thereby losing time. A huge cocoanut was discovered in a hat hanging on the rack in the entrance hall, and the folds of the curtains, when shaken, yielded a shower of the smaller nuts that called forth exclamations of delight.
Paper bags, made of Japanese napkins glued together, were given to the "squirrels" in which to collect their treasure-trove.
The "squirrels" were invited to display their harvest. The boy and girl whose count was the highest received pen-wipers made of cornucopia-shaped pieces of cloth, alternately scarlet and gray, the points meeting in the centre, whereupon were set heads of little gray squirrels. They were prepared at a furrier's and cost a dollar and a half apiece.
A Nut Race
was then proposed.
Two large Russian bowls, of the gay red-and-gold ware, containing exactly the same number of hickory |
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