“STUNT NIGHT” WITH SQUIRRELS’ INN
Several things had conspired to put off the White Mountain and
Wiscasset trips, till within about ten days of the close of camp.
The first was a three days’ jaunt, when the girls were taken first
by boat, then by truck, with their packs, to the foot of Mt.
Washington, which they were to climb. The second led to historic
little Wiscasset, part of the way by boat, the rest a hike, except
for the little girls who were taken all the way by launch. The night
was spent under the stars near the old block house, meals were
carried in the launches, and the return the next day was on the same
plan, partly by boat, partly on foot.
Patty despaired of having any practice for the Squirrels’ Inn
“stunt”, but concluded that inasmuch as they were not attempting any
formal performance before a critical audience, one or two hasty
rehearsals of the program as a whole in the club room would do. Only
Frances and Hilary were going to Mt. Washington, but the other girls
all went to Wiscasset.
At last the fateful night arrived, stage property was quickly
collected, each girl having her own peculiar accoutrement to gather,
and Miss Patricia was on hand with the program in full, ready to
prompt or to take part with the performers. At the piano was a
musical councillor, who was to play the accompaniments, and Eloise,
who had been ill when her own klondike had their evening, had been
asked to help with the singing. That it was a musical program might
be taken for granted by any who knew Miss West’s tastes and her
chief avocation. But it is not to be supposed that she would
undertake any classical performance as a “stunt”. The music
consisted of the popular airs; the songs were little verses
illustrating Merrymeeting activities, all bound together by one
central idea.
That announcement of the numbers might be avoided, the girls had
prepared small programs written on ordinary yellow tablet paper, cut
and folded. The audience upon the floor of the club room read upon
the outside:
Squirrels’ Inn
Presents
The Merrymeeting Follies
of 19—
Monday Evening, August ——
Inside they found the program in order, and tongues were busy as
they looked it through.
“O, I wonder what that is. Do you suppose that the doctor will
really be in it?”
“Took at this: ‘Bird Hike.... Bird, Mother Nature and Chorus’.
Birdie, are you going to take part?”
“Of course not,” replied the nature lady, settling back in her
little rocking chair. “But I lent them my rubber boots and hat.”
“I wonder,” said Betty behind the curtain, “if they will take it in
about the head band.”
“Of course they will,” said Frances, who was just adjusting hers
across her forehead. “The headband—the connecting link which has a
symbol for all the things we do!” This with the explanatory gesture
of an orator.
“There will be some funny symbols put up tonight,” said Betty,
tossing up a volley ball.
“I guess so. Imagine a pickle jar on our head bands! Dear me, I hope
I don’t forget my songs.”
“You haven’t had much time to learn them. Have you gotten over the
effects of mountain climbing?”
“O, yes; there weren’t any, except my tired feet.”
“Everybody here and ready?” asked Miss Patricia, looking last to see
if Isabel and Virgie, who were to manage the curtains, were in
place.
At her signal, they drew aside the curtains, revealing the eight
girls—Frances, Marion, Nora, Hilary, Lilian, Betty, Cathalina and
Eloise, who were dressed in full camp costume, including head bands,
arm bands, and diamonds on the sweaters, and carried each some
emblem of Merrymeeting activities, from volley ball and paddle to
the silver cup marked Merrymeeting Trophy.
After a chord from the accompanist, the girls sang to a popular
ragtime tune the “Opening Chorus” of the program:
“Just a head band,
Golden and Blue;
Athletic emblems
Of what we can do—
Swimming, baseball, tennis, paddling, basketball,
Volley, hiking,—at our camp we do them all.
But these symbols
Don’t represent you;
There are other things
That you do,
And if you will watch our little show tonight,
We’ll give you a head band that’ll be right.”
The curtains were drawn together in the midst of the applause which
welcomed the first appearance, but in a few moments were again
parted and drawn aside. The audience for a second expected an encore
or a new number, then saw the point as June shouted, “O, there’s the
head band!” For across the stage at a convenient height and pinned
upon the wall was an immense dark-blue “head band”, upon which had
just been placed the customary M C with a small pine tree on each
side. The golden symbols, like the program, were cut from yellow
tablet paper.
“I get it,” said Jo. “They’re making a head band with our
‘Follies’.”
The first activity to be perpetuated in song was the “Marshmallow
Roast” of the program. When the curtains were drawn, they disclosed
in the foreground a camp fire made of sticks, in the center of which
glowed a lighted lantern covered with red paper. Close to this sat
the “marshmallow”, covered with white and occasionally shaking a
white powder from the drapery, by which she was concealed. Frances
stood back of her holding the stick on which she was supposed to be
impaled. The tune was “Old Black Joe”.
“Marshmallow plump,
With sugar powdered o’er;
Marshmallow white,
They wish they had some more;
Marshmallow brown,
As down their throats I go,—
I hear Camp Merrymeeting calling
‘Marshmallow!’
CHORUS:
Marshmallow, marshmallow,
I’m used for every roast;
I hear Camp Merrymeeting calling,
‘Toast! Toast! Toast!’”
Curtain. Curtains apart again. A fat marshmallow on the head band,
next to one of the pine trees.
“This next ought to be funny,” said Dot, who was in the front row.
“‘Deep Sea Fishing, (a) Fish Chorus, (b) Fishermen’s Chorus.’ How
can they fix up fish?”
“They don’t have to much,” answered June. “We are supposed to use
our imagination. Hilary says that they didn’t use to have all the
stage fixings that they think they have to now.”
“Sh-sh, here they are!”
Four girls in Merrymeeting costume sat upon the edge of the big
table under the head band. With sticks and lines they were fishing.
In front of them, facing the audience, but lying upon the floor in
swimming position, were four “fish”, just the girls, in customary
garb, without any attempt at a fish costume. To the lively tune of
Jingle Bells, and with the movements appropriate to swimming and
“flapping” of fins, they sang the following ditty:
“We are the fishes gay,
Swimming every day,
In the ocean blue,
Just see what we can do!
We dart and dance about,
Each minnow and each trout;
We glisten and we gleam,
As we sidestroke down stream.
CHORUS:
Flap your fins! Flap your fins,
Fishies in the sea,
Oh what fun to splash and dive
And swim so gay and free!
Flap your fins! Flap your fins,
Fishies in the sea,
O, who would not a fishie be
In the bottom of the sea!”
At this, the fishers started a rollicking chorus with waving lines:
“We’re deep-sea fishers,
Watch us fish!
We ride out over the ocean
Where-e’er we wish.
We don’t have to wait for the fish to bite,
They jump on the hooks when we heave in sight,—
We’re deep-sea fishers,
Watch us fish!”
At the appropriate time the fishes turned and caught the lines, then
rose as the fishers jumped down from the table, and all danced
around in a circle, while the accompanist played the tune through
once, finishing it as the last fish or fisher disappeared through
the door in the midst of most enthusiastic applause, especially from
those who had memories of the deep-sea fishing trip.
The Bird Hike was introduced by a solo from the bird, the burden of
whose refrain was:
“Come along, there’s a bird hike here today;
Get you ready, there’s a bird hike here today;
I know them by their graceful walk,
There’s a bird hike here today.
I’m a poor old fowl, but I’ll fool ’em yet,” etc.
Hilary was the “bird”, and sat on the corner of that most convenient
table, when—enter Mother Nature and Girls. “Clementine” was the tune
in which the following musical conversation occurred:
GIRLS—
Mother Nature, Mother Nature,
Shall we see some birds today?
MOTHER NATURE (ELOISE)—
Very likely, very likely,
If only quiet you will stay.
GIRLS—
Mother Nature, Mother Nature,
Here’s a rock where we may sit.
MOTHER NATURE—
Yes, sit down and all be quiet,
While we wait for birds to flit.
GIRLS—
Mother Nature, Mother Nature,
What’s that bird upon the limb?
MOTHER NATURE—
Steady now, give me the glasses,
While I take a look at him.
Eloise as Mother Nature, in the well known hat pulled down over her
face, the scarlet blouse of the nature lady and the rubber boots
which had given her the title of Puss in Boots, was hailed with wild
applause and shrieks of delight from the audience. The nature lady
herself leaned back in her chair to laugh at this clever
representation. In a sweet contralto, Eloise sang her comments on
the bird while she gazed through the glasses:
“Dear little bird in the bushes,
Under the old pine tree,
Singing alone,
In a sweetly cheerful tone,
Perching in the air(!)
Flying everywhere!
Notice the marks on his wings, girls;
Look at the stripe on his knee;
I’m sure this pretty bird
Will be the rarest thing we’ve heard
What kind of a bird, girls,
Can that bird be?”
The girls now took up the air, repeating the same song with Eloise,
and assuming attitudes of delight when the Bird began to sing. But
how their expressions changed as he announced that as only a
Plymouth Rock rooster “cock-a-doodle-doo” was all that he could
sing, “when I flap my wing, scaring everything”. And while he would
like to be an “eagle” or a “flycatcher”, it was merely as a
“scratcher” that he could claim their interest. Curtain.
The “Merrymeeting Moon”, which came next, was entirely different
from anything which had been given. Lilian, who represented the
chief editor, Maribelle Hartley, was prettily dressed in a real
party frock, filmy and beautiful, wore silver slippers and carried a
round “moon.” This was a round circle of cardboard, cut out in the
center to leave only a wide rim and covered with silvered paper.
Grace and gestures with this moon and a few steps here and there to
show the silver slippers accompanied a very pretty song written to
one of the more elaborate ragtime tunes.
“Merrymeeting needs your gleaming, just to keep us all a-beaming,”
sang Lilian, addressing the silver moon which she was holding above
her head; and at the close of the song she stood with her face
framed within the rim while singing:
“Can’t you all tell
That I’m Maribelle,
I’m the Man in the Moon, you see.”
The audience was scarcely satisfied with one repetition of this, but
time was pressing and the program had to go on. By this time a fish,
a bird and a moon had been added to the symbols on the head band.
The girls enjoyed taking off the camp doctor in the next act, called
on the program, The Infirmary, Doctor—and Gargling Girls. There had
been some mild cases of tonsilitis, immediately isolated in the
“Infirmary”, where, with skull and cross-bones, the girls had
announced the “Leper Colony” on a clever sign, and bewailed their
isolation. This was all portrayed in the sketch. First the girls
appeared, wrapped in long bath robes and singing pathetically about
the “tonsils’ retreat” and the “little cots, whose owners have
spots,—
And the doctor’s job,
Their throats to swab,
Can’t be beat!”
Their temperature was “torrid” and the gargle “horrid”. Then came
the doctor, who looked at their throats with the aid of an immense
kitchen spoon, and sang with great enjoyment a solo to the effect
that he had waited long to catch them, but had them fast quarantined
now. Giving each a spoonful from a large bottle, he stood before
them like an orchestra leader, and beat time with the spoon, while
in throaty tones to the tune of John Brown’s Body the girls sang,
“Gargle, gargle, gargle, gargle,” etc., and falling into a
procession behind the doctor, filed out. This proved so popular that
the “doctor” was forced to repeat his solo and lead again the chorus
of gargling girls. Frances, of course, as the tallest of the girls,
impersonated the doctor and tried to imitate his step and movements.
This time the curtains parted to show a spoon on the head band.
“What do you suppose the next will be?” asked Jean in the audience.
“It says ‘Pickles’,” replied Rhoda, “but who knows how they’ll do
it?”
“Pickles
(a) Onion
(b) Cauliflower
(c) Quartered pickle,” read the program.
When Isabel and Virgie drew the curtains, Betty, Cathalina and Nora
stood there decked in green crepe paper, Betty’s costume having
yellow trimmings. At once Betty, to the tune of “Reuben, Reuben”
began the song of the pickled onion:
“Picnic pickles you’ve been eating,
All the pickles you could get,
I should think you’d hate to think of
All the pickles you have ‘et’,—
H’m-te-dum-tum,
H’m-tum-dum!”
(Turning around quickly)
“Here behold the pickled onion
Round and sweet as I can be,
Where’ll you find another onion
Anywhere to equal me?
H’m-te-dum-tum,” etc.
Nora now took up the song:
“My name’s pickled cauliflower,
I’m as crisp as I can be;
Where’ll you find another cauliflower
Anywhere to equal me?” Refr.
Cathalina’s inquiry was similar:
“Once I was a full-sized pickle,
But they came and quartered me;
Where’ll you find a quartered pickle
Anywhere to equal me?” Refr.
At this point the Picnic Pickles joined hands above their heads and
circled the stage singing:
“Three sweet pickles in the barrel,
Picnic pickles can’t be beat;
Merrymeeting girls all love us,
Eat and smile and smile and eat!”
“Merrymeeting Music” not unkindly took off several of the girls in
camp, among them one of the chief “yell-leaders”, and Rhoda, whose
really beautiful piano playing the girls had so much enjoyed all
through the weeks of camp. Marion represented her and sang; to
“Boola, Boola”:
“I am Rhoda
I can play
Brahms and Chopin
Any day.
If you listen
I’ll start you off
On the Prelude
Of Rachmaninoff.”
Lilian, with her guitar, and Eloise with ukulele, sat upon the floor
to sing two or three of the camp favorites and represented the
“Jazz” of the program.
Musical notes now appeared upon the head band next to the pickle
jar, and the audience again consulted their programs. “Whiskaway”
was to appear.
Betty was slim and had made a remarkable though simple costume of
black, covering her arms with long black stockings and padding out
with cotton a muslin mask to imitate the muzzle of a dog. The rest
of the face had a comical expression, and the corners of the big
square of muslin had been tied into ears. A gentle old dog sometimes
wandered into camp from a neighboring farm, although dogs were
forbidden, and had been dubbed “Whiskaway” by the girls.
Down on her knees Betty moved about, causing much amusement among
the little girls in front by the waving of her paws and the swinging
of the doggy nose, which was not very well fastened at the lower
part. At the last Betty assumed a begging attitude, her
stocking-covered hands hanging limply over, with such effect that
this tableau and chorus had to be repeated:
“When a cold nose gives you a fright,
That’s dear Whiskaway;
When a footstep sounds in the night
That’s poor Whiskaway!
I love to sleep in the softest bed,—
I don’t care whether it’s the foot or the head.
I don’t mean to scare you,
But only prepare you
For poor, dear Whiskaway!”
The ensemble chorus gave the new Merrymeeting song which had won the
prize. In this and the camp yell with which the performance closed
the audience could not help joining, and went away to sing these
masterpieces of poesy and song for the rest of the week.