| Show DAUGHTERS OF EYE I How to Make Home Attractive For the Children SIMPLE INTERESTING GAMES I i from Homes Where laughter Is Heard That Good lieu antI Women Come Other Notes For THE SUNDAY HEUALDI I i easy enough t be pleasant AVhcii life lions by like a song Cut the man worth while Is the man who will smile When everything goes dead wrong For the test of the heart Is trouble And it always comps with the ear And the smile that is worth the praises ot earth Is the one that resists desire low to Rake Home Attractive fO the Children Whether home is really home or only a stopping place depends greatly upon the life that centers there Home in the largest larg-est and truest sense implies I great deal It means rest contentment affection tenderness ul1ecton derness purity and progress I is the best that is left us of Eden But I have seen homes where tho parents wero good and conscientious having the best welfare of their children at heart who yet really made no homo for their children simply because they had forgotten forgot-ten what belonged to childhood They were parents whom it seemed to me must always have been men and women like Adam and Eve always full grown with never a memory of childish wants and needs I remember a household amid tho hills of New England where tho fine old house under the shadow of the elms hardly ever echoed to the music of childish laughter laugh-ter although it had its share of children and where the little boys and girls were never allowed to romp together much less pass an evening in merry games The Assemblys catechismwas the book for Sunday and Blue Beard and Mother Goose and Cinderella were all ignored on weekdays fairy land was a realm into which the children might not enter and even merry old Santa Claus was kept at bay as a popish invention which they might not harbor Nature set the example of gladness for them Tao birds sang and twittered merrily in the branches the squirrels skipped and chattered among the treetops and the frogs held a carnival of gladness every summer night within hearing hear-ing and the merry brook never ceased its humming but for those children there was nothing but firmness no careless sports but a constant life of repression Well of course those children grew up and a whole community of such people as they made would never do the world any good because their characters their whole being was stunted and onesided They never had known what childhood is and they had no sympathy with it Children must have amusements and recreations There is a world of wise phylosophy in tho ole adage All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy Amusements are a legitimate legiti-mate need of childhood and pleasant pastimes pas-times should neither bo repressed nor ignored ig-nored Make your children happy at home in the enjoyment of harmless pleasures as well as in tie fulfillment of simple duties and you lay broad and deep the foundation for the life outside the home A happy childhood child-hood is the foundation from whicn to draw in all after life a green spot to which we turn if lifegrowsloneiyin may lfe grows lateryears An excellent game and one which will stimulate the children to study is called Century Count I is played by having one of the party leave the room when a century is assigned to him such as sixth eighth or nineteenth On his return he is charged with all the crimes and abuses of his century which he must excuse explain ex-plain or acknowlege according to his wit thC excellence of his century are also attributed to him and its noble character all of which he must politely accept trying at the same time to discover to what century he belongs When he succeeds in determining which century he represents ho selects the person per-son whose last speech gave him the hint and says The eighteenth or other century cen-tury begs leave t retire introducing Mr to the court and tho new victim anl yictm leaves the room while another century is selected When he returns some one says for example Ob how could you assassinate assassi-nate one of tho best men that ever lived William tho Silent Another one adds Well if he did ho produced pro-duced one ot tho greatest poets Shakespeare Yes says another and tried to Introduce the inquisition into Holland But exclaimsanother that was nothing to the massacre he caused St Bartholomew He was a good ham at sinking ships too Yes chimes In another and it made the most gentlemanly gentle-manly duck imaginable crow for joy Admirable Drake Oh yes and laid the foundation for roast goose on Michael masday This gives a gleam of light t Mr Century if he is up in his history and ho exclaims Thank you I see roast goose sinking snips and Michaelmasday that means the Spanish Armada and Queen Elizabeth thus making me represent sixteenth century Now 1 will give place to you And so tho game goes on It is instructive instruc-tive and may be made full of interest and fun us well I have see players so delighted de-lighted with it that it has employed almost tho whole evening There is another gamo which affords splendid fun and is called Justice is blind Blindfold one player who must take a seat in thQ middle of the room when the leader takes up t her each one ot the company Justice must then pass an opinion opin-ion upon each and the leader must deCde whether or not the opinion is sufficiently correct for Justice to transfer the bandage to the person described Amusing mistakes are often made on account of their being sow so-w oUJ at variance with tho character of the person described The Russian Gamo of Gossip will afford much amusement and is played in this way One of the company composes and writes Out a striking but short narrative narra-tive of about adozen lines or so This he reads carefully liimself then folds and puts out of sight Taking tho person on his left asldo he repeats to him as accurately accu-rately as he can remember what he has written Number two repeats this and so it passes round until It reaches the last player This last person rewrites tLo story and it is then compared com-pared with the original When the story finally reaches home it will never be recognized as tho one which was told by the first speaker But I will not suggest further in this article the sources of amusem nt which may bp found to enliven an evening at home when guests aro present or other vise but in the future I will speakof this again There arc a large number of Chau tauqua games advertised at a reasonable reason-able rate so that they are within I tbe reach of every one For little children the oldfashioned gamo of Fox and Geese has a charm that will hold them for hours and Chccizers does not lose its charms even over older children Chess when onco fully mastered is captivating to most young people and Blind Mans Buff delights the children of this generation as it did those of bygone days It is out from the homes where such laughter is heard that Jho men and women come who make the world better and wiser and whoare strongest years to resist the temptation of after I |
