A programme with small pencil attached, like the one shown in Fig. 97, should be given to each guest upon her arrival. The engagements for five minutes’ conversation are made by putting your name down on your friend’s card opposite the time chosen for your conversation with her. Five minutes only are allowed for one conversation. Two or more consecutive engagements with one person are not allowable. When engagements are made and programmes filled, the hostess, or anyone willing to be time-keeper, must ring a bell giving notice that the conversation is to begin. At the end of five minutes the bell is to be rung again, when all talking must instantly cease, the exchange of positions be quickly made, and a new conversation be commenced. [Illustration: _Fig. 97_] The time-keeper should be strictly attentive to her duties, for the bell must be rung regularly at the end of every five minutes. The hour allotted to this new mode of conversation will pass very quickly, and cannot become in the least tiresome, as the time spent in talking to any one person is so very short. =Blind-man’s Singing-school.= One of the party must be blindfolded to take the part of teacher. The class composed of the rest of the players should sit in a line facing her. The teacher informs her scholars that they will begin the lesson by singing the scales. Then the head girl, or the one at the top of the line, sings ah! and the next, ah! a little higher or lower, and so it goes down the line; each one in turn uttering ah! in any key or note she please; in a high shrill voice, or the deepest tone a girlish throat is capable of. The teacher should listen attentively, and when she thinks she recognizes a voice she must command the class to stop while she makes some criticism on the manner in which the note is sung, at the same time calling the singer by name. When one of the players is named correctly, she must be blindfolded and become teacher, while the former teacher takes her place in the class. A general exchange of seats is made before the singing lesson recommences, that the voices may not be guessed by the direction from which they come. To give variety to this game the second teacher may direct the class to sing a song, selecting some well-known nursery rhyme; then, beginning at the top of the line as before, each player must sing the word which comes to her to supply. It is the privilege of each teacher to direct the class to sing whatever she may choose, either song or exercise. =A Game of Noted Men,= is played in this way: The hostess begins the game by saying, I know a celebrated poet; the first part of his name is very black, and the last is an elevation. Whoever gives the right name, which is Coleridge (coal, ridge), in her turn describes the name of some noted person. She may choose Shakespeare and say, I give the name of a noted author and poet; the first part is something people are apt to do when they are cold, the last is a weapon of warfare.