M. E. W. Sherwood

“ Every evening she describes herself as spending an hour or two over these combinations. This is not to be confused with the game of peg solitaire.
Whist! Who shall pretend to describe its attractions? What a relief it is to the tired man of business who has been fighting the world all day, to the woman who has no longer any part in the gay and glittering pageant of society! What pleasure in its regulated, shifting fortunes! We all have seen that holding the cards—even the highest ones—does not always win the game. We have noticed that with a poor hand somebody wins fame, success, happiness. ”

“ In the early morning we can imagine a lady going into her neat kitchen to prepare the desserts for the day, and finding it very agreeable. She will set her well-flavored custard away in the ice-chest with a serene knowledge of how good it will be at dinner, and place her compote of pears securely on a high shelf, away from that ubiquitous visitor the cat, who has in most families so remarkable and irrepressible an appetite. ”

“ Now, in our musical home training we may not make an Arthur Sullivan, but we shall certainly add to the sum of innocent enjoyment; and it is a delightful fact that if there are six or seven children in a family, one of them is apt to have a good voice, one a talent for the piano, and generally all can be taught to play and sing a little. Sometimes there are rarely gifted, great musical organizations in all the sons and daughters, which is a supreme blessing. For there is not only Home Amusement in it, but a certainty of making a good living, if fortune frowns and makes work necessary. ”

“ It is this to which the modern tapestry worker should address herself, if among the amusements of home she counts the making of curtains, and wall-coverings, and portières, which shall almost suggest the possibility that they once hung in a Florentine or a Venetian palace. A dark background of some cheap woolen stuff, a knowledge of drawing, the silk and woolen and cotton and linen threads now brought to our hand so cheaply—will all furnish forth the appliances for the making of tapestry hangings, such as a castellan of the Middle Ages would not have despised. ”

“ The only deep shadow to the musical picture is the necessity of practicing, which is not a Home Amusement; it is a home torture. If only a person could learn to play or sing without those dreadful first noises and those hideous shrieks! ”

“ We all like to accumulate, to believe that we are Fortune’s favorite. What matter if it be only a few more beans than one’s neighbor? The principle remains the same.
So long as cards do not lead to gambling, they are innocent enough. Indeed, they are a priceless boon to eyes which can no longer see to read; to those who must get rid of time; to those who are ill, weary, or unfortunate. We always wonder at seeing the young take to them; it seems as if they could do so much better; but the sight of a parlor, warm, well lighted, with its games going on in every corner, is not a disagreeable one. ”

“ Grasses, on the contrary, and a thousand pods and seed-vessels, grains and cat-tails, and certain weeds, dry into beautiful colors and make most wonderful groups for the parlor mantel. The young ladies of our vast continent can not do a better thing than to each year add to these beautiful and most graceful bouquets, which retain, like the fabled Dryads, all the fascination of Nature, even when they have passed into sticks and dry leaves. ”

“ It can be sufficiently curious and varied to amuse the home circle, and so long as it is done for that purpose, fortune-telling can do no harm.
But the moment we rise above the idea that the beans, the tea-grounds, the black cat, the cards, or the lines in the palm, are but blind guides, making the most palpable mistakes, then the tampering with the curtain becomes dangerous, and we had better leave the future alone. ”

“ The business is done if one only thinks he can do it; and there are numbers enough to work at it. A boarding-school holiday, a watering-place, a large town bent on “getting up something” for charity, should have one such home behind it, where a natural-born leader will set the whole thing going, and the picturesque shores of Italy will give up their delights to some western town, some inland village, some quiet and decorous hamlet of New England, where all the inhabitants are dying of ennui. ”

“ One can be more general in the invitations to a garden party than to any other; for if people like each other they can group together, and if they do not, they can easily walk apart, and get rid of each other. In a small room, particularly at a dinner party, how two people can glow and glare at each other, to the dreadful dismay of the hostess! But at a garden party Nature is too wide for them. They are almost obliged to seem amused whether they are or not. ”

“ We can not but notice, as people go on in life—when, as Lord Mansfield said, “The absence of pain is pleasure, just as in youth the absence of pleasure is pain”—that the quiet corner by the fire, or the seat at the library-table with the shaded lamp, and a quiet game or two when reading has fatigued the eyes, becomes almost necessary. ”

“ All fashion polishes off the edges, and causes an aristocratic icing to form over the outside of any expression of jollity; so no wonder that fashionable dancing has become a glissé. It would not be well to attempt any gay dancing at a fashionable ball—that would look like romping; but surely in the old kitchen, in the private parlor, at Christmas, on birthdays, one is allowed to romp a little.
The German is a dance of infinite variety, and a leader of original fancy constructs new figures constantly. The Waltz, Galop, Redowa, and Polka steps occur in its many changes. ”

“ But the long life at home of the rank and file, the severe winters, during whose rigors the ardent and ambitious and pleasure-loving were shut up for months behind four dreary walls, were not illumined by patterns of artistic fancy-work from South Kensington, or by the delightful knowledge of china painting. No ingenious boy or girl thought of cutting or carving in wood beyond the vulgar whittling, which all good housekeepers condemned. ”

“ A climbing rose should go scattering itself over an imperceptible wire trellis. A geranium should steadily blossom beneath. A group of yucca, agave, dracæna, Jerusalem cherry, should form a distinct and effective grouping below. And then beautiful trailing plants should drop from hanging baskets, and from every “coigne of vantage.” Ivy grows well in the shade, and may be employed for trailing around sofas, couches, tête-à-tête chairs, and picture-frames. Ladies sometimes tie a bottle of water behind a picture-frame, and allow the long shoots of nasturtion to grow out as if from the wall. ”

“ But it is upon society that she is strongest. She loved nature, too, in a Frenchwoman’s way. When she walked the garden of her uncle, the Abbé, at Livry, or far away in the solitudes of Brittany, she rejoiced in the song of the nightingale, in the change of the leaf, in the glad freshness of the air. ”

“ A fan painted to illustrate a song or a ballad is a very pretty thing. The common linen fan, on which a clever hand draws with pencil or ink the story of “Mary, Mary, quite contrary,” becomes a precious possession. And in these days of Kate Greenaways and Rosina Emmets we ought to have many charming fan decorators. We should not object if they selected the old-fashioned maniéré goddesses, hovering cupids, smiling nymphs, and posé infants of Boucher, if they would give us his cool, pearly grays, and sweet, soft rose tints. ”

“ Let us return to our three legitimate decorations—our fan-painting, our screen-painting, and our embroideries.
Of Embroidery the world is full, and at its best estate. The foolish old German wool-worsted work has gone out, and in its place we have the very elaborate church needle-work of the Middle Ages, and, better still, its tapestry.
Some ingenious lady discovered that a plain piece of carpet made a very good background for a rich curtain, after a few stitches of embroidery were added; and it took but one step farther for another lady to find in cotton velvet a good background for tapestry. ”

“ Why have we not spoken more fully of the library, with its quiet and respectable arm-chairs, its green table, its shelves filled with those silent friends who never desert us, its paper-cutter, its wood-fire, its latest magazine, its quiet, and the heavy curtain dropped at evening? ”

“ As for Chess, the devotee of this heavy, remorseless game has no further need of our help or sympathy. To any one who likes to puzzle his brain over the fantastic skips of the Knight or the prodigious descent of the Castle, we can offer no suggestions except that he may be left undisturbed.
As for Music, one can hardly say anything which has not been said about its transcendent powers in assisting at every Home Amusement. The family circle which has learned three or four instruments, the brothers who can sing part songs, are to be envied. They can never suffer from a dull evening. ”

“ It is only when these extempore talents can be used without alarming people that they are useful or endurable.
We might make our Christmas holidays a little more gay in this country. We might read and study up all the old English and the German customs, beyond the mistletoe, the tree, and the rather faded legend of Santa Claus. There are worlds of legendary lore which would help us to make this time-honored festival even more lively and gay and amusing than it is. We have not yet reached the English jollity at Christmas. ”

“ We must go where the forest-growths expand in all their strength and splendor. We must find the shyest wild flower, the most untamable vine. It is in the fable of Daphne that we read the deep significance, the poetry, the true meaning of our love of the picnic. ”

“ There can be no harm, however, in a playful consultation of the leaves of the daisy, the four-leaved clover, the fortunate black cat who brings us luck, the moon over the right shoulder, the oracular “You shall travel over land and sea”—believing in all the good fortune, but in none of the bad. The salt should be carefully thrown over the left shoulder, if spilled, and all the Fates and Fairies should be propitiated. It gives delightful variety to life to know all the superstitions and the lore of old nurses and grandmothers. ”

“ But these few directions may seem impertinent, as every lady has now the most ample means of reading up about her garden. The cultivation of a few flowers in the house—window gardening—is by far the more essentially a Home Amusement. And, as almost everybody has once bought a lot of greenhouse plants but to see them fade before her eyes, we recommend to all to either raise a slip from the root or to start very young plants in a dark room. Thus accustomed to the atmosphere of the house they are to live in, they do sometimes live. ”

“ In these days, when amateur cultivation has reached a high point, let everybody say to herself, “Am I sufficiently advanced to give pleasure by my singing?” and let her modestly abstain from singing if she finds that, after hearing her once, her friends do not press her to sing again. There is, perhaps, nothing so foolish as for a woman to persist in singing in her own parlor when she is not a thoroughly good vocalist. No one can get away from her there. They must suffer. Still, if birds can sing, they should sing. Nothing is more disagreeable than to have to urge a person to sing. ”

“ Few, if any, modern archers in long shooting reach four hundred yards, or in shooting at a mark exceed eighty or a hundred. But archery has been since the invention of gunpowder only followed for pastime. It is decidedly the most graceful game which can be practiced, and the legends of Sherwood Forest, of Robin Hood, Maid Marian, Little John, Friar Tuck, and the Abbot carry us into the fragrant heart of the forest, and bring back memories which are agreeable to all people who have in them a drop of Saxon blood. ”

“ The German Cotillon, born many years ago in a Viennese palace to meet the requirements of court etiquette, is now the favorite dance at home and at balls, as a way of finishing the evening. Its favors, beginning with flowers, ribbons, and bits of tinsel, have ripened into fans, bracelets, gold scarf-pins, and pencil-cases, and many other things even more expensive. Favors now often cost $5,000 for one fashionable ball. So the German, thus conducted, can scarcely be called a Home Amusement.
To dance by the firelight to the music of the piano is a Home Amusement. ”

“ But around the one astral lamp which then shed its uncertain rays upon the family circle there were the same elements of which human society is now composed, and there was one amusement present whose absence we now sometimes have to regret. ”

“ Young girls are too apt, in playing private theatricals, to sacrifice character to prettiness. Now this is a fatal mistake. To dress a part with finikin fineness, which is to be a representation of quite different sorts of qualities, is poor art. Let them rather imitate Miss Cushman’s rags in Meg Merrilies, or Bastian Le Page’s homely peasant simplicity in Joan of Arc. Remember, the drama is the mirror of nature, and should produce its strong outlines and its deep shadows. It is in this realism that men surpass women. ”

“ Such ice-cream, such glorified Charlotte Russe, such cakes, such delicate apple-pies, such creams and jellies as fall from a lady’s fingers—these are ambrosial food!
There is among certain women a great passion for the cleanly part of household work. The love of a dairy has grown to be a favorite task with many a duchess. In our country, where ladies are compelled to put a hand, perhaps once too often, to the household work, owing to the inefficiency of the servants, this is not ordinarily considered the most thoroughly amusing of Home Amusements. ”

“ A lady can make all sorts of ornamental flower-pot coverings, and herself arrange pretty leather and paper standard covers for the ugly but useful flower-pot of commerce; or she can buy at most country potteries some very artistic flower-pots—also useful. And to put red, green, and blue glass tubes for hyacinths among these gives her window a very pretty effect. The very study of color in these minor matters adds much to her window garden. It is lucky for all lovers of beauty that beauty is now cheap. Art is putting her slender foot down everywhere ”

“ Who of us—comfortable and well housed—but has in some moment of nomadic instinct envied the tramp and the gypsy their life of chapleted ease, as they lie on the greensward, hugging dear mother Nature to their very bosoms? ”

“ So we can not count in dancing as one of the usual pleasures of a garden party, unless a broad platform is laid; and this has in its way a very pretty effect under the trees or in a large tent.
A garden party is for all ages; so there should be in our uncertain climate full provision for the elderly, who can not always spend an afternoon on the lawn. Broad piazzas are very useful, and much enjoyed by those who fear our treacherous malarious soil; and if one can not exercise, it is better to sit on a piazza than on the grass. ”

“ If she gets a tin pan also fitted in cunningly, she has the loveliest table ornamentation all ready. Her buffets, her parlor-table, her piano, her brackets can all hold these pleasant things, for which no money need be paid, but which have a value far above money. Never give these baskets a heavy, packed look, but allow plenty of the rich green leaves of the rose to set them off. It seems to us that ladies might create an endless succession of Home Amusements by studying how to vary the effect of their vases and baskets of flowers. ”

“ The boy begins to play the drama of life with his puppets, and afterward exploits the wild dreams of youth in the company of the strolling players. We are, indeed, all actors. We all know how early the strutting soldier-instinct crops out, and how soon the little girl assumes the cares of the amateur nursery. ”

“ But any intelligent gardener will tell more in an hour than we could do in a week on the subject of ferns. Many ladies delight in selecting these lovely aristocrats of the forest themselves. They find no difficulty in arranging a little family of native ferns in an improvised Ward’s case; and this pursuit, as a reason for a woodland ramble and a subsequent fit of industry on the back piazza, is one which has no end as a Home Amusement. ”

“ No occupation conduces more to quiet and pleasant thought than that of embroidery. We want realism; but we also want idealism. There is no sort of doubt that Art, once admitted as a friend of the family, becomes the greatest instigator of all sorts of Home Amusements, whether peeping out through the paint-box, the needle, the embroidering-frame, the etching tool, or the turpentine-bottle and the mineral paints which are to decorate the plaque. Art is a sprite whose acquaintance should be cultivated. ”