auction of hearts and the auction of valentines are old but
excellent ways of amusing a company. For the auction of hearts the girls
are in a separate room and a clever auctioneer calls off their charms
and merits and knocks them down to the highest bidder, who does not know
who he has bought until all are sold. A fancy dress party, each girl
representing a valentine, is a delightful entertainment for the evening.
A small boy may be used for Cupid and blindfolded. He takes a man from
one side of the room and presents him to a girl on the other side of the
room.

CHAPTER IX.

A GRANDMOTHER'S TEA PARTY.

One of the newest suggestions for an original hospitality is "A
Grandmother's Tea Party." If you have an "at home" day, as every busy
woman should, and you want to serve tea to your guests, offer it to them
as it was offered fifty years or more ago.

First of all, collect all of your antique table service. Every family
has some dear old treasures of the kind--tea cups, old linen, flower
vases, silver epergns, etc.

You probably have somewhere laid away a wonderful old damask cloth which
dates back at least half a century. Cover the table with this and
scatter over it a handful of carnations, allowing them to fall at
haphazard.

The centerpiece will be in the form of a huge cake placed on a high
glass dish. This confection might be resplendent in a design of blossoms
and turtle-doves carried out in variously tinted icings as the old-time
cakes so often were.

On either side of the cake dish are placed tall epergns--veritable
antique pieces built high with pyramids of fruit. Bonbons--they should
be called sugar plums in this connection--must be old-fashioned sweets
quaintly wrapped in fringed papers.

Often the tall glass lamps will also be procurable in a pattern of fifty
years ago.

This will produce a thoroughly charming little table with a quaintness
and a touch of femininity that everyone will enjoy.

The woman who is looking for a new way to serve tea on her day at home
couldn't do better than to attempt this. It is easy to do; it costs
little, it is pretty; it is feminine.

AN APRIL FOOL TEA.

Send invitations asking your guests to dress as foolish as possible. The
hostesses costume can be combinations of several, as a decollete
corsage, short walking skirt, one high-heeled slipper and one bedroom
slipper, one side of her hair braided and hanging down and the other
piled up high and decorat