I often wonder if the next generation of grandmammas will make such cookies, mince pies, and doughnuts as ours did; but this was in Kentucky, and you know that we still observed the old-fashioned customs, and all day long the gentlemen came dropping in by twos and fours, and such handshaking and laughing, and such courtly compliments, and such a bowing and a wishing of Many Happy New Years, it does me good to think of. Who knows but that so many kind wishes of a long and happy life, sincerely given, may really help to bring it to pass. Small as I was at the time, and little as I understood the customs or conversation, the spirit of the whole day was intelligible and appealed to the little child, perhaps more forcibly than to the grown-up people. It is really too bad that the crowded states of our large cities tend to lead to the gradual decline of the custom of New Year’s calls, so that now many people confine themselves to sending and receiving cards, making the always stiff and formal bits of engraved pasteboard, do all the calling and receiving; but =New Year’s Parties= are not out of date, so we will have one on New Year’s Eve, because then young and old are privileged to sit up all night, that is, until after twelve o’clock midnight, and have all the fun possible. Let us begin our frolic with a =Pantomime of an Enchanted Girl.= For this a damp sheet must be fastened up across the room or between the folding doors of the parlor. First, fasten the corners of the sheet, next, the centre of each of the four sides, in order that the cloth may be perfectly smooth; then place a lighted candle on the floor, about four or five feet from the centre of the curtain. When the lights in the room occupied by the audience are turned out, leaving it in total darkness, so the shadows of the actors behind the curtain may be seen on the screen, someone, standing outside of the curtain and facing the audience, should explain or relate the story of the play: of how a young girl, while walking out on the last day in November, meets Halloween, who presents her with three gifts to try her fortune, and how, when she is about to do so, a witch enchants her, etc. After the story is finished, and a lively overture has been performed on some musical instrument, the pantomime is played as follows: