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:
“If you would be my Valentine,
Follow please the bright green line.”
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.