Home Games and How to Play Them

Stated First Edition. Stapled 12mo with pasted covers; 30, (2) blank, (4)pp. Very Good with masking tape along the front hinge, sticker remnant inside front cover. Light soil, rubbing and discoloration to wraps, puncture through the first two leaves. Presents nicely, with wonderfully unusual polka-dotted pattern. Contents and copious illustrations are printed in blue, green, and maroon monochrome, echoing the style of most Fireside games.

Suggestions for wholesome home play using items from around the house. Some are genuinely great ideas, like "Photograph Whist,” which calls for 52 photographs of any type and size (“from the old-time daguerreotype to the latest and handsomest creation”) to be “played” and judged for prettiest, funniest, etc. In “Patchwork Pictures,” the hostess amasses printed advertising and distributes large pieces of paper with quotations to guests, who scramble to choose scraps for illustrating their quote.

Published by Fireside Game Company, a counterintuitive marketing strategy promoting the lack of need to buy their games. The booklet appears to have been issued in two variants: one with a 14-page illustrated catalog of games at the end, which could be attained through a mail-order promotion; and this issue, which instead has a two-page appeal to parents about the value and necessity of play, and two pages with examples of the card designs and list of publications, printed on a slightly different paper stock. The book is obscure to begin with, but the OCLC record and “Big Game Hunter” bibliography both indicate the longer catalog, with no mentions of this variant.

The creation of Fireside Game Co. as a subsidiary of the U.S. Playing Card Company to market children’s games and skirt religious objections is well-documented. Their games were packaged with endorsements from Christian leaders, focusing on the educational and artistic value of the cards. The appeal at the end of Home Games, quoted in part below, is uncommon evidence of the company’s efforts, made in plain language. Published as Fireside was being rebranded as the Cincinnati Game Co. (as reflected on the cover), it feels like a closing argument, trying to win over the remaining objectors before the next century, and the boom of educational games, left them behind.

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It Has Passed Into a Proverb, that "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," and what is true of Jack is equally true of Jill. Young people must have amusements. Their need for them is just as real as is their necessity for food or clothing. The love of play and sport, universal among youth the world over, shows that amusement is evidently one of the original instincts of human nature, and must be gratified. It can not be repressed. If denied in one form, it immediately breaks out in some other. If parents do not provide the opportunity for their children to enjoy innocent pleasures amid wholesome surroundings, they will certainly find vicious ones for themselves. Therefore, any well directed attempt to promote an innocent amusement is better than a dozen sermons against pernicious ones."