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A Progressive March Party
A GROUP of high school friends, a social club of boys and girls, or a church society of young people will enjoy giving the following party in March. Send out invitations written on cards reading as follows: March is the month of all the year When lamb and lion do appear, When pussy willow comes anew And March hare scampers into view.
If you would meet these creatures four And maybe several others more, Then come prepared for work and play To Grangers' hall, March first, the day.
On the invitation cards, tiny hares, lions, lambs, or sprays of pussy willows can be outlined or traced by means of carbon paper from pictures. [33] The guests upon arrival draw from a basket containing tiny toy or cracker lions, lambs, rabbits and cats, whichever kind of favor they wish.
According to the favor each one draws, the guests take their places respectively at the March hare table, the lion table, the lamb table, or the pussy willow table. Each table is marked by a distinguishing centerpiece: at the March hare table is a plaster rabbit, at the lion table, a toy lion; the lamb table has a woolly lamb on wheels, and the pussy willow table, a bunch of pussy willows or a stuffed cat.
The fun is now ready to begin, for with the implements and materials provided at each table the guests are required to produce a facsimile of the animal for which the table is named. Different materials are provided at each table, so there is no monotony, as the guests progress from table to table after half an hour's stay at each one in turn.
Modeling clay is the medium in which the March hares are to be done, and no imple- [34] ments except fingers are supposed to be used, though if a boy slyly makes use of his jackknife, there are no embarrassing questions asked.
The lions are to be carved from potatoes with the aid of little kitchen vegetable knives, and the lambs are to be fashioned from cotton wool, matches, and mucilage.
At the pussy willow table the guests must show how expert they can be at cutting cats, free hand, from flannel. Beads for eyes, and floss and bristles for whiskers, are also furnished. Prizes are given for the best and the worst specimen at each table.
A rabbit's foot charm, a small reproduction of the Barye lion, or the well-known Perry picture of a lion, a Dresden-china lamb or shepherdess, and a pussy-cat plate, pincushion, or paper weight are suggestions for first prizes, and four little tin horns painted green may be given as booby prizes to the four "greenhorns" who have the worst showing. [35]
A party for a mixed group of young people, built on four emblems of March and four craft tables. Of everything in this book it is the page that needs the least translating.
- Progressive is a formatThe guests are divided among four tables and move round as a group, half an hour at each, as in progressive whist. The word has lost that meaning entirely. Here it is the mechanism that makes the party work and stops anyone being stranded.
- The four emblemsLamb and lion come from the proverb about how March arrives and how it leaves; the March hare and the pussy willow are the month’s other signs. The invitation verse assembles all four, and each table then produces a model of one of them.
- The materials, translatedModelling clay for the hares, small vegetable knives and potatoes for the lions, cotton wool with matchsticks for the lambs, flannel cut freehand for the cats. Mucilage is gum glue, and ordinary white school glue does the same work. None of it costs anything.
- Prizes, and the punThe first prizes include a reproduction of a well-known bronze lion and a cheap printed art reproduction of the kind sold for schoolrooms. The booby prizes are four green tin horns for the four worst entries, and the joke turns on the word greenhorn, which a modern guest will miss.
- Best and worst, both rewardedEvery table gives a prize for the best specimen and one for the worst. It is a small piece of social engineering that keeps a room of teenagers trying and leaves nobody humiliated, and it is the most portable idea on the page.
The venue names the community. Grangers’ hall is the meeting house of a farmers’ organisation, which puts this party in a small town or a farming district rather than a city. The guests are offered as a high school set, a mixed social club of boys and girls, or a church young people’s society, which are three names for the same people, who would have known each other through all three. Everything the party needs is clay, potatoes, cotton wool, flannel and a hall the neighbourhood already owned.