Healthful Sports for Boys

Excerpt

CHAPTER I

MARBLES: WHERE MADE; TERMS OF THE GAMES; DIFFERENT GAMES; HOW TO ACQUIRE SKILL

Each season has its own particular work for the farmer, and he does his work without direction from or consultation with his neighbors or any one else. Each season has its own particular games for the young folks, and they take to them without any suggestion from outsiders, just as young ducks take to water, without any instructions from the mother bird. The seasons in the south temperate zone are just the opposite to those in the north. Some years ago I spent the months of July and August in New Zealand, and great was my surprise to find the boys down at Dunedin snowballing on the Fourth of July, while the sleigh-bells made music through the streets. In the following October, which is the spring month in Victoria, Australia, I found the youngsters of Melbourne playing marbles, just as the boys in New York had been doing when I left it the previous May.

MARBLES

We have reason to believe that the first marbles were fashioned from pebbles on the ocean's shore, or ground into roundness by the action of river currents. We do not know when or where marbles originated, but of the antiquity of the game we are very sure. Egyptian boys played marbles before the days of Moses, and marbles are among the treasures found buried in the ruins of Pompeii, which you will remember was destroyed by an eruption of lava from Vesuvius in the first century of the Christian era. To-day marbles are played in every civilized land under the sun, and with slight differences, the method of shooting and the games are practically the same.

Germans are the greatest toy and game-makers in the world, and so we should not be surprised to learn that that great country not only produces the most marbles, but also the very best. From Germany we get the finest "agates," the beauty and value of which every lover of the game knows. The more common marbles are made in Saxony, of a fine kind of white limestone, which is practically a variety of the building material known as "marble," and from which the name is derived. Broken into small pieces, and the irregular bits placed between two grooved grinders, the lower one being stone and the upper wood, power is applied, and after much rotating the spheres are turned out, hundreds at a time, and these are afterwards sorted and polished.

Glass marbles, some of which are imitation agates, are cast in moulds that close so perfectly that the place where they join cannot be seen in the finished product. China marbles are made from pottery-clay, and after being joined are baked, and sometimes they are painted. The small gray, brown or black marbles, usually called "commies," are little balls of clay, baked and glazed. These, being the cheapest, are the most numerous, and are usually the objects of attack, and so change owners the oftenest.

NAMES OF MARBLES AND PLAY TERMS

While the names of marbles and the terms of the game may vary slightly in different parts of the United States, they are in the main so much alike that the following will be understood by all boys throughout the land:

The Taw or Shooter is the marble used for shooting....