University of Virginia Library

RECEIVING THE GUESTS

ON Hallowe'en night great care should be taken in the preparations for receiving the guests in a mystic manner; no pains should be spared in the effort to start the evening off with a "bang."

Several novel ideas are offered for starting the guests off on the right informal spirit. Before they arrive, it is a good plan to take the street number off your house and fasten it to the porch of your next door neighbors, who will, of course, be at home because they are

perfectly impossible people whom no one would invite anywhere. Extinguish all the lights in your own house; your neighbor, as he comes downstairs twenty-five or thirty times in the next hour, will obligingly tell your bewildered friends specifically where to go.

When the guest finally learns from the neighborhood policeman which house on the block is really yours he will discover on your door a sign reading:

Leading from the door is a green cord which the mystified guest proceeds to follow, according to directions. This cord should guide the way to the coal cellar of your other neighbor who has recently purchased an automatic revolver under the delusion that burglars are operating in the neighborhood. As your bewildered guest gropes his way about the cellar, it is quite likely that he will be shot at several times and by the time he emerges (if he does emerge) he will be quite

delightfully full of the informal spirit of Hallowe'en and ready for anything.