Another way in which the announcement could be made is to prepare telephone messages of the news and tie them to the ends of blue ribbons hanging from the tongue of the bell.  The hostess may announce that the “bell tolled” when the guests are allowed to open and read their messages.

AN APPLE SHOWER

A girl who was very fond of apples in every form, so much so that all her friends knew about it, was given a clever shower after she became engaged.

The invitations were cut in apple shape and tinted a little with red and green water colors.  The following verses voiced the plan of the party and notified the guests: 

      Invitation to a Shower

Apples, apples everywhere Will doubtless make up half the fare On Elsie’s future menu pad, As they are Elsie’s greatest fad.  So if you’d keep that fact in mind In shower presents—­’twould be kind; Send it to me the day before And come on Saturday at four.

  January the twentieth
  At Mary’s house.

The first amusement of the afternoon was an apple-guessing contest, the names of different varieties of apples to be guessed from literal definitions, thus:  The Royal Apple—.  King.  After that there was an apple-peeling contest in Hallowe’en fashion and each girl threw the peeling over her left shoulder to discover the initial of her future husband.

Immediately following this, the hostess, with the help of one of the other girls, brought in a big bushel basket apparently filled with huge rosy apples, and set it down before the guest of honor.

When the green ribbon around the stem of each make-believe apple was untied, the red crepe paper opened out, disclosing, in wrappings of soft cotton, a variety of gifts for the apple-loving girl.

There was an up-to-date corer and a plate for baking apples, a fat plush apple pincushion for the kitchen, a red apple “bank” with a slit for savings, one of the beautiful Wallace Nutting photographs of a New England apple tree in full pink and white bloom, an artistic brown basket for apples to be kept on the buffet or used for the breakfast table, and a delightful fruit bowl with an apple border.

One girl had contributed a little booklet of choice apple recipes, a jar of apple butter and another of home-made apple sauce.  One artistic member of the group had stenciled a crash table runner for the porch table with a conventional apple design in yellow and orange and green, and another girl put the same design very decoratively on a round box of painted tin.

Two of the prettiest gifts were a cunning sports handkerchief with a cluster of apples stamped in one corner, and a smart flat silk hat ornament in the shape of three apples.

Before the happy bride-to-be had finished exclaiming over her gifts, the hostess served buffet refreshments that were as pretty as they were delicious.  There were little individual molds of pink apple tapioca, topped with whipped cream and accompanied by small home-made cakes, frosted uniquely.  Each one had in the center of its white icing a miniature apple bough as a decoration, made from two red maraschino cherries, two leaf-shaped pieces of green angelica and a bit of citron.