Introduction

Games are meant to amuse, but in addition to amusing, a good game, played in the right spirit, may have great educational value. Now, this is distinctly a book of games and amusements. There are games for indoors, scores of them, while there are other scores that can be enjoyed only in the open.

When young folks, and older folks, too, for that matter, meet for a pleasant evening, it is rather depressing to have them sit solemnly on stiff chairs in the company room and stare helplessly at one another, like folks awaiting a funeral service. Now, if there is present, and there usually is, a bright girl, who knows the games in this book, and she starts in to “get the ball a- rolling,” all will soon be enjoying themselves better than if they were watching a three-ring circus. And then the volleys of wholesome laughter that will roll out–why they will be better for the digestion than all the medicines of all the doctors. It will be noticed that some of the outdoor games and others devised for indoors, require some apparatus, like tennis and croquet, or backgammon boards and magic lanterns, but the majority need only the company, and–let it be added–the disposition to have a good time. Within the covers of “Entertainments for Home, Church, and School,” you will find condensed and clearly set forth the best of a library of books on amusements.