By Kate Upson Clark
A correspondent asks for some games for Valentine ‘s Day . No doubt others may like a few suggestions for such games.
If you are entertaining children, suppose you cut out from stiff pink (or any color) paper a number of fairly good-sized hearts. Hide them around the room, as for thimble, or peanut parties. Divide the children into couples. Make the couple first finding and really touching a heart, the King and Queen of Hearts. That may be honor enough, if you have pretty pink crowns (with hearts and other decorations on them) for the fortunate two, or prizes may be given. In the order in which the hearts are found, the children may be duke and duchess, earl and lady, baron and baroness, etc. Have no more hearts than titles, and have coronets for each pair. A throne may be easily devised, and from that the king and queen may bestow the coronets (with or without prizes) as the hearts are found.
The dances for children’s parties should be the pretty, old-fashioned reels, contra-dances, quadrilles and so on, rather than the so-called modern “round dances.” Those old dances are far more interesting and graceful than these later ones. At any children’s party a photograph of the group may well be taken, since nothing pleases the children more. The sandwiches, cakes, ices, etc., should be heart-shaped.
For young men and maidens, try “Dear to the Heart.” Cut out from pink, white or red stiff paper, large hearts,—a foot or more long. A ribbon loop makes them easier to handle. Gather together many magazines and illustrated papers and several tubes of paste. (A towel, wet at one end, may well be provided also for each guest.) Put a guest’s name on each card. Those for the men might have a different color from those for the girls, though it is not necessary, if some distinctive mark is used on them. Mix them up, with the names down, and let each man draw a card having a girl’s name, and each girl draw a man’s card. Then let them cut from the magazines and papers pictures or bits of text suggesting the character, pursuits, fads and so on of the person whose name each card bears. A limit, such as twenty minutes or half-an-hour, may be set upon the time to be spent in decorating the cards.
It might be interesting to vote on the merits of the hearts when completed and examined, with prizes for the two or three or four best, and “booby” prizes accordingly. At the refreshment table a great “Cupid’s Cake” of favors may be piled in cake shape, a ribbon leading from each favor to a plate. At a certain time during the feast, each should pull his or her ribbon, and some pretty valentine or other appropriate favor will respond. This is a pretty game for clubs which are not too large.
Frank Leslie’s Weekly, founded in 1855 and continued until 1922, was an American illustrated news publication started by publisher and illustrator Frank Leslie. While only 30 copies of the first edition were printed, by 1897 its circulation had grown to an estimated 65,000 copies.
Source: Frank Leslie’s Weekly — February 12, 1914
