The Art of Amusing: Being a Collection of Graceful Arts, Merry Games, Odd Tricks, Curious Puzzles, and New Charades. Together with Suggestions for Private Theatricals, Tableaux, and All Sorts of Parlor and Family Amusements.

In 1866, Frank Bellew observed that his fellow Americans had grown dangerously serious. Life had become all business and no play, and something essential was being lost in the process: the art of simply being amusing together. This book is his remedy. A compendium of grace arts, merry games, odd tricks, curious puzzles, and fresh charades, it was designed to rescue evenings gone dull, to crack open the stiff formality of Victorian parlors, and to give families something to do besides stare at the walls. Here are instructions for private theatricals and living tableaux, for card puzzles that stump guests, for tricks that require only nimble fingers and a straight face. Bellew believed that laughter and play were not frivolous but necessary, that a society that forgot how to amuse itself was a society forgetting how to be human. Whether you want to stage a charade, confuse your friends with a mechanical puzzle, or simply understand why your great-great-grandparents needed instructions for having fun, this book is a charmingly earnest time capsule of Victorian ingenuity and the eternal human need to play.