Mae's Real Stories

Louisa May Alcott was one of the authors in the card game called Authors. For each author the card game had four cards with the author's picture on each one. The cards also named four books by the author. The name of one book was at the top to make the cards all different from each other.

When you played Authors, first one person, the "dealer," would give each player some cards. When you took your turn, you could ask for cards by saying the name of an author or the name of a book. If another player had a card with that author or book at the top, she would have to give it to you. When you got all four cards for one author, you would put them down on the table. At the end, the person with the most cards on the table was the winner. In all there were thirteen authors with four books each.

Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, and Robert Lewis Stevenson were some of the authors. You can see their pictures on the cards here.

I liked Louisa May Alcott because I had read some books by her, like Little Women. I had not read books by most of the other authors then, but by now I have read something by all the authors.

I especially liked to say the names of these authors: Henry Wordsworth Longfellow. Alfred, Lord Tennyson. James Fenimore Cooper. William Makepeace Thackeray. All of the authors lived a long time ago, so I thought that some of them were sort of funny looking.

We played other card games too, like Old Maid, Go Fish, and War. When we got older, we also learned to play Casino. My father taught us this game. I learned to play Canasta and Gin Rummy from my cousin Marcia. My aunts liked to play cards with their friends, but my mother and father never played cards with other grownups, and I don't think my mother liked to play cards at all.

We also played a lot of board games. My favorites were Who, Clue, and Scrabble. Elaine and Arny liked Monopoly.