Читать книгу What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes - Dorothy Canfield Fisher - Страница 75

"The Traveler" is a favorite variety of the "Family Coach." In this game a player with a ready tongue is chosen as traveler, and the others are given such names as landlord, bell-boy, clerk, waiter, chambermaid, electric light, elevator, bed, supper, paper, sitting-room, bedroom, steam-radiator, slippers, and so on. The traveler is then supposed to arrive and give his orders. "Can I have a room to-night? Good. And how soon will supper be ready? Ask the bell-boy to take my satchels up to my room. Show me to my room and send up the papers." And so on, each person named having to stand up or be booked for a forfeit.

This game lends itself to various new forms. One might be called "The Bicyclist" and run thus:—A player having been chosen as the bicyclist, the others take as many bicycling names (or two names each might add to the fun) as there are players. Thus—lamp, wick, oil, handle-bars, spokes, tires, chain, pump, nuts, bell, hedges, fields, sheep, roads, hill, dog. This settled, the bicyclist will begin his story, something in this style:—

It looked so fine this morning that I determined to go for a long ride. So I got out the pump and blew up the tires, put the monkey-wrench to a few nuts, filled the lamp, trimmed the wick, polished up the bell and the handle-bars, and started off. The roads were perfect. The fields were shining with dew, the hedges were sweet with honey-suckle, and I skimmed along like the wind until suddenly, at the turn at the foot of Claymore Hill, I rode bang into a flock of sheep and came down with a smash. You never saw such a ruin. The lamp and bell were lost completely, the handle-bars were twisted into corkscrews, the tires were cut to ribbons, the spokes looked like part of a spider's web, my hands and my knees were cut, and the worst of it was that the shepherd's dog mistook me for an enemy and I had to beat him off with the monkey-wrench, until the farmer heard the noise and came to the rescue.

During this story all the players named would, in the ordinary way, stand up for a moment when their adopted names were mentioned, except at the point when the accident occurs, and then every player bearing the name of a part of the bicycle—the handle-bars, spokes, tires, chain, air-pump, lamp, wick, bell, monkey-wrench, pump, nuts—should fall to the ground.