Halloween In 1909

"Oh, fruit loved of boyhood! the old days recalling.
When wood-grapes were purpling and brown nuts were falling!
When wild, ugly faces we carved in its skin,
Glaring out through the dark with a candle within!
When we laughed 'round the corn -heap, with hearts all in tune.
Our chair a broad pumpkin - our lantern the moon.
Telling tales of the fairy who traveled like steam
In a pumpkin-shell coach, with two rats for her team!"

These swinging lines of Whittier's to the gold-tinted pumpkin once upon a time inspired a crowd of college girls to carry out a rollicking Pumkin Masquerade Halloween, 1909.

Each girl was asked to bring a pumkin and wear a long, black cloak of calico reaching to the floor. The gymnasium had, to all appearaces, been turned into a cornfield. The walls were lined with corn husks, shocks of corn and brilliant autumn leaves, and were studded with Jack-o'-Lanterns, their roistering souls shining out through their jovial features.

As the guests arrived in the dressing-room the reception committee provided each girl with a piece of pumpkin-colored calico measuring about twenty inches by twenty-eight. The two short ends had been sewed together. One of these baglike yellow cases was slipped over each girl's head. Eyes, nose and mouth were then cut in their proper places and little dabs of black or brown paint added finishing touches to the pumpkin countenances.

The evening began merrily enough when the "Pumpkin" guests were furnished with knives and bits of candle, and asked to compete for a Jack-o'-Lantern prize, each contestant striving to make the jolliest Jack-o'-Lantern from the pumpkin she had brought, in a time limit of fiftenen minutes.

When the time was up these lanterns were lighted and the orchestra (piano and violin) softly began "Jack-o'-Lantern March," while the Jack-o'-Lantern, glowing weirdly in the darkness, formed into a real, old-fashioned march followed by a quadrille, and when the feet of the dancers were clacking merrily on the floor a cleverly-constructed moon slowly arose from behind a stack of cornstalks back of the musicians, and humorously surveyed the revel of the cornfield and pumpkin-patch.

The moon had been made by placing a strong electric light in a box having a circular opening, over which was stretched a piece of yellow cheesecloth, a comical smiling face having been sketched on the cloth. The only lights in the room came from the moon and the Jack-o'-Lantern faces, and the whole scene was indescribably effective.

Little pumpkin baskets containing Halloween goodies for two were hidden about the room, and when feasting time came the couples were bidden to hunt them up and open them around the huge bonfire lighted out on the campus for the feast.

Written By: Mary McKim Marriott.
This Article called Social Affairs for Halloween originally appeared in THE LADIES HOME JOURNAL, Issue October 1909.