Pastimes for Peter Pan

This game relies entirely on wide general knowledge, hardly comparable with the more relaxed, jocund party skills demanded of guests earlier this century. When Carol Kennicott, heroine of Sinclair Lewis' novel Main Street, entertained her Mid-West neighbours around the 1920s she required them to remove their shoes prior to a game of 'Wolves and Shepherds' (the men were the wolves, and had to regain their sheep-shoes from lady shepherds, who had previously hidden them.) Simple stuff, but for the college-educated bride Carol a definite improvement on her first social experience in Main Street: an evening which included an imitation of a Norwegian catching a hen, a Jewish story, a parody of Mark Antony's funeral oration and a recital of 'Old Sweetheart of Mine' – something Carol was doomed to hear nine more times that winter.