VIII.
PLAYS AND PASTIMES.
ABOUT the time fate cursed him with a granted prayer in those boots, myboy was deep in the reading of a book about Grecian mythology which hefound perpetually fascinating; he read it over and over without everthinking of stopping merely because he had already been through ittwenty or thirty times. It had pictures of all the gods and goddesses,demigods and heroes; and he tried to make poems upon their variouscharacters and exploits. But Apollo was his favorite, and I believe itwas with some hope of employing them in a personation of the god that hecoveted those red-topped sharp-toed calf-skin boots. He had a notionthat if he could get up a chariot by sawing down the sides of astore-box for the body, and borrowing the hind-wheels of the baby'swillow wagon, and then, drawn by the family dog Tip at a mad gallop,come suddenly whirling round the corner of the school-house, wearingspangled circus-tights and bearing Apollo's bow and shaft, while asilken scarf which he had seen in a bureau-drawer at home blew gallantlyout behind him, it would have a fine effect with the boys. Some of thefellows wished to be highway robbers and outlaws; one who intended to bea pirate afterwards got so far in a maritime career as to invent asteam-engine governor now in use on the seagoing steamers; my boy wascontent to be simply a god, the god of poetry and sunshine. He neverrealized his modest ambition, but then boys never realize anything;though they have lots of fun failing.
"A CITIZEN'S CHARACTER FOR CLEVERNESS OR MEANNESS WASFIXED BY HIS WALKING ROUND OR OVER THE RINGS."]
In the Boy's Town they had regular games and plays, which came and wentin a stated order. The first thing in the spring as soon as the frostbegan to come out of the ground, they had marbles which they played tillthe weather began to be pleasant for the game, and then they left itoff. There were some mean-spirited fellows who played for fun, but anyboy who was anything played for keeps: that is, keeping all the marbleshe won. As my boy was skilful at marbles, he was able to start out inthe morning with his toy, or the marble he shot with, and a commy, or abrown marble of the Lowest value, and come home at night with apocketful of white-alleys and blood-alleys, striped plasters findbull's-eyes, and crystals, clear and clouded. His gambling was notapproved of at home, but it was allowed him because of the hardness ofhis heart, I suppose, and because it was not thought well to keep him uptoo strictly; and I suspect it would have been useless to forbid hisplaying for keeps, though he came to have a bad conscience about itbefore he gave it up. There were three kinds of games at marbles whichthe boys played: one with a long ring marked out on the ground, and abase some distance off, which you began to shoot from; another with around ring, whose line formed the base; and another with holes, three orfive, hollowed in the earth at equal distances from each other, whichwas called knucks. You could play for keeps in all these games; and inknucks, if you won, you had a shot or shots at the knuckles of thefellow who lost, and who was obliged to hold them down for you to shootat. Fellows who were mean would twitch their knuckles away when they sawyour toy coming, and run; but most of them took their punishment withthe savage pluck of so many little Sioux. As the game began in the rawcold of the earliest spring, every boy had chapped hands, and nearlyevery one had the skin worn off the knuckle of his middle finger fromresting it on the ground when he shot. You could use a knuckle-dabsterof fur or cloth to rest your hand on, but it was considered effeminate,and in the excitement you were apt to forget it, anyway. Marbles werealways very exciting, and were played with a clamor as incessant as thatof a blackbird roost. A great many points were always coming up: whethera boy took-up or edged beyond the very place where his toy lay when heshot; whether he knuckled down, or kept his hand on the ground inshooting; whether, when another boy's toy drove one marble againstanother and knocked both out of the ring, he holloed "Fen doubs!" beforethe other fellow holloed "Doubs!" whether a marble was in or out of thering, and whether the umpire's decision was just or not. The gamblingand the quarrelling went on till the second-bell rang for school, andbegan again as soon as the boys could get back to their rings whenschool let out. The rings were usually marked on the ground with astick, but when there was a great hurry, or there was no stick handy,the side of a fellow's boot would do, and the hollows for knucks werealways bored by twirling round on your boot-heel. This helped a boy towear out his boots very rapidly, but that was what his boots were madefor, just as the sidewalks were made for the boys' marble-rings, and acitizen's character for cleverness or meanness was fixed by hiswalking round or over the rings. Cleverness was used in the Virginiasense for amiability; a person who was clever in the English sense wassmart.
There were many games of ball. Two-cornered cat was played by four boys:two to bat, and two behind the batters to catch and pitch.Three-cornered cat was, I believe, the game which has since grown intobase-ball, and was even then sometimes called so. But soak-about was thefavorite game at school, and it simply consisted of hitting any otherboy you could with the ball when you could get it. Foot-ball was alwaysplayed with a bladder, and it came in season with the cold weather whenthe putting up of beef began; the business was practically regarded bythe boys as one undertaken to supply them with bladders for foot-balls.
When the warm weather came on in April, and the boys got off their shoesfor good, there came races, in which they seemed to fly on wings. Lifehas a good many innocent joys for the human animal, but surely none soecstatic as the boy feels when his bare foot first touches the breast ofour mother earth in the spring. Something thrills through him then fromthe heart of her inmost being that makes him feel kin with her, andcousin to all her dumb children of the grass and trees. His blood leapsas wildly as at that kiss of the waters when he plunges into their armsin June; there is something even finer and sweeter in the rapture of theearlier bliss. The day will not be long enough for his flights, hisraces; he aches more with regret than with fatigue when he must leavethe happy paths under the stars outside, and creep into his bed. It isall like some glimpse, some foretaste of the heavenly time when theearth and her sons shall be reconciled in a deathless love, and theyshall not be thankless, nor she a step-mother any more.
About the only drawback to going barefoot was stumping your toe, whichyou were pretty sure to do when you first took off your shoes and beforeyou had got used to your new running weight. When you struck your toeagainst a rock, or anything, you caught it up in your hand, and hoppedabout a hundred yards before you could bear to put it to the ground.Then you sat down, and held it as tight as you could, and cried over it,till the fellows helped you to the pump to wash the blood off. Then, assoon as you could, you limped home for a rag, and kept pretty quietabout it so as to get out again without letting on to your mother.
With the races came the other plays which involved running, likehide-and-go-whoop, and tag, and dog-on-wood, and horse, which I dare saythe boys of other times and other wheres know by different names. TheSmith-house neighborhood was a famous place for them all, both becausethere were such lots of boys, and because there were so many sheds andstables where you could hide, and everything. There was a town pumpthere for you, so that you would not have to go into the house for adrink when you got thirsty, and perhaps be set to doing something; andthere were plenty of boards for teeter and see-saw; and somehow thatneighborhood seemed to understand boys, and did not molest them in anyway. In a vacant lot behind one of the houses there was a whirligig,that you could ride on and get sick in about a minute; it was splendid.There was a family of German boys living across the street, that youcould stone whenever they came out of their front gate, for the simpleand sufficient reason that they were Dutchmen, and without going to thetrouble of a quarrel with them. My boy was not allowed to stone them;but when he was with the other fellows, and his elder brother was notalong, he could not help stoning them.
There were shade trees all along that street, that you could climb ifyou wanted to, or that you could lie down under when you had runyourself out of breath, or play mumble-the-peg. My boy distinctlyremembered that under one of these trees his elder
brother firstbroached to him that awful scheme of reform about fibbing, and appliedto their own lives the moral of "The Trippings of Tom Pepper;" heremembered how a conviction of the righteousness of the scheme sank intohis soul, and he could not withhold his consent. Under the same tree,and very likely at the same time, a solemn conclave of boys, all theboys there were, discussed the feasibility of tying a tin can to a dog'stail, and seeing how he would act. They had all heard of the thing, butnone of them had seen it; and it was not so much a question of whetheryou ought to do a thing that on the very face of it would be so muchfun, and if it did not amuse the dog as highly as anybody, couldcertainly do him no harm, as it was a question of whose dog you shouldget to take the dog's part in the sport. It was held that an old dogwould probably not keep still long enough for you to tie the can on; hewould have his suspicions; or else he would not run when the can wastied on, but very likely just go and lie down somewhere. The lot finallyfell to a young yellow dog belonging to one of the boys, and the ownerat once ran home to get him, and easily lured him back to the other boyswith flatteries and caresses. The flatteries and caresses were notneeded, for a dog is always glad to go with boys, upon any pretext, andso far from thinking that he does them a favor, he feels himself greatlyhonored. But I dare say the boy had a guilty fear that if his dog hadknown why he was invited to be of that party of boys, he might havepleaded a previous engagement. As it was, he came joyfully, and allowedthe can to be tied to his tail without misgiving. If there had been anyquestion with the boys as to whether he would enter fully into thespirit of the affair, it must have been instantly dissipated by thedog's behavior when he felt the loop tighten on his tail, and lookedround to see what the matter was. The boys hardly had a chance to cheerhim before he flashed out of sight round the corner, and they hardly hadtime to think before he flashed into sight again from the otherdirection. He whizzed along the ground, and the can hurtled in the air,but there was no other sound, and the cheers died away on the boys'lips. The boy who owned the dog began to cry, and the other fellowsbegan to blame him for not stopping the dog. But he might as well havetried to stop a streak of lightning; the only thing you could do was tokeep out of the dog's way. As an experiment it was successful beyond thewildest dreams of its projectors, though it would have been a sort ofrelief if the dog had taken some other road, for variety, or had evenreversed his course. But he kept on as he began, and by a common impulsethe boys made up their minds to abandon the whole affair to him. Theyall ran home and hid, or else walked about and tried to ignore it. Butat this point the grown-up people began to be interested; the motherscame to their doors to see what was the matter. Yet even the motherswere powerless in a case like that, and the enthusiast had to be leftto his fate. He was found under a barn at last, breathless, almostlifeless, and he tried to bite the man who untied the can from his tail.Eventually he got well again, and lived to be a solemn warning to theboys; he was touchingly distrustful of their advances for a time, but hefinally forgot and forgave everything. They did not forget, and theynever tried tying a tin can to a dog's tail again, among all the thingsthey tried and kept trying. Once was enough; and they never even likedto talk of it, the sight was so awful. They were really fond of the dog,and if they could have thought he would take the matter so seriously,they would not have tried to have that kind of fun with him. It curedthem of ever wanting to have that kind of fun with any dog.
As the weather softened, tops came in some weeks after marbles went out,and just after foot-races were over, and a little before swimming began.At first the boys bought their tops at the stores, but after a while theboy whose father had the turning-shop on the Hydraulic learned to turntheir tops, and did it for nothing, which was cheaper than buying tops,especially as he furnished the wood, too, and you only had to get thewire peg yourself. I believe he was the same boy who wanted to be apirate and ended by inventing a steam-governor. He was very ingenious,and he knew how to turn a top out of beech or maple that would outspinanything you could get in a store. The boys usually chose a firm, smoothpiece of sidewalk, under one of the big trees in the Smith neighborhood,and spun their tops there. A fellow launched his top into the ring, andthe rest waited till it began to go to sleep, that is, to settle in oneplace, and straighten up and spin silently, as if standing still. Thenany fellow had a right to peg at it with his top, and if he hit it, hewon it; and if he split it, as sometimes happened, the fellow that ownedit had to give him a top. The boys came with their pockets bulged outwith tops, but before long they had to go for more tops to that boy whocould turn them. From this it was but another step to go to the shopwith him and look on while he turned the tops; and then in process oftime the boys discovered that the smooth floor of the shop was a betterplace to fight tops than the best piece of sidewalk. They would havegiven whole Saturdays to the sport there, but when they got to holloingtoo loudly the boy's father would come up, and then they would all run.It was considered mean in him, but the boy himself was awfully clever,and the first thing the fellows knew they were back there again. Somefew of the boys had humming-tops; but though these pleased by theirnoise, they were not much esteemed, and could make no head against thegood old turnip-shaped tops, solid and weighty, that you could wind upwith a stout cotton cord, and launch with perfect aim from the flatbutton held between your fore finger and middle finger. Some of the boyshad a very pretty art in the twirl they gave the top, and could controlits course, somewhat as a skilful pitcher can govern that of abase-ball.
I do not know why a certain play went out, but suddenly the fellows whohad been playing ball, or marbles, or tops, would find themselvesplaying something else. Kites came in just about the time of thegreatest heat in summer, and lasted a good while; but could not havelasted as long as the heat, which began about the first of June, andkept on well through September; no play could last so long as that, andI suppose kite-flying must have died into swimming after the Fourth ofJuly. The kites were of various shapes: bow kites, two-stick kites, andhouse kites. A bow kite could be made with half a barrel hoop carriedover the top of a cross, but it was troublesome to make, and it did notfly very well, and somehow it was thought to look babyish; but it washeld in greater respect than the two-stick kite, which only the smallestboys played with, and which was made by fastening two sticks in the formof a cross. Any fellow more than six years old who appeared on theCommons with a two-stick kite would have been met with jeers, as a kindof girl. The favorite kite, the kite that balanced best, took the windbest, and flew best, and that would stand all day when you got it up,was the house kite, which was made of three sticks, and shaped nearly inthe form of the gable of a gambrel-roofed house, only smaller at thebase than at the point where the roof would begin. The outline of allthese kites was given, and the sticks stayed in place by a stringcarried taut from stick to stick, which was notched at the ends to holdit; sometimes the sticks were held with a tack at the point of crossing,and sometimes they were mortised into one another; but this was apt toweaken them. The frame was laid down on a sheet of paper, and the paperwas cut an inch or two larger, and then pasted and folded over thestring. Most of the boys used a paste made of flour and cold water; butmy boy and his brother could usually get paste from the printing-office;and when they could not they would make it by mixing flour and watercream-thick, and slowly boiling it. That was a paste that would holdtill the cows came home, the boys said, and my boy was courted for hisskill in making it. But after the kite was pasted, and dried in the sun,or behind the kitchen stove, if you were in very much of a hurry (andyou nearly always were), it had to be hung, with belly-bands andtail-bands; that is, with strings carried from stick to stick over theface and at the bottom, to attach the cord for flying it and to fastenon the tail by. This took a good deal of art, and unless it were welldone the kite would not balance, but would be always pitching anddarting. Then the tail had to be of just the right weight; if it was tooheavy the kite kept sinking, even after you got it up where otherwise itwould stand; if too light, the kite would dart, and d
ash itself topieces on the ground. A very pretty tail was made by tying twists ofpaper across a string a foot apart, till there were enough to balancethe kite; but this sort of tail was apt to get tangled, and the besttail was made of a long streamer of cotton rags, with a gay tuft ofdog-fennel at the end. Dog-fennel was added or taken away till just theright weight was got; and when this was done, after several experimentaltests, the kite was laid flat on its face in the middle of the road, oron a long stretch of smooth grass; the bands were arranged, and the tailstretched carefully out behind, where it would not catch on bushes. Youunwound a great length of twine, running backward, and letting the twineslip swiftly through your hands till you had run enough out; then youseized the ball, and with one look over your shoulder to see that allwas right, started swiftly forward. The kite reared itself from theground, and, swaying gracefully from side to side, rose slowly into theair, with its long tail climbing after it till the fennel tuft swungfree. If there was not much surface wind you might have to run a littleway, but as soon as the kite caught the upper currents it straighteneditself, pulled the twine taut, and steadily mounted, while you gave itmore and more twine; if the breeze was strong, the cord burned as it ranthrough your hands; till at last the kite stood still in the sky, atsuch a height that the cord holding it sometimes melted out of sight inthe distance.
If it was a hot July day the sky would be full of kites, and the Commonswould be dotted over with boys holding them, or setting them up, orwinding them in, and all talking and screaming at the tops of theirvoices under the roasting sun. One might think that kite-flying, atleast, could be carried on quietly and peaceably; but it was not.Besides the wild debate of the rival excellences of the different kites,there were always quarrels from getting the strings crossed; for, as theboys got their kites up, they drew together for company and for aneasier comparison of their merits. It was only a mean boy who would tryto cross another fellow's string; but sometimes accidents would happen;two kites would become entangled, and both would have to be hauled in,while their owners cried and scolded, and the other fellows cheered andlaughed. Now and then the tail of a kite would part midway, and then thekite would begin to dart violently from side to side, and then to whirlround and round in swifter and narrower circles till it dashed itself tothe ground. Sometimes the kite-string would break, and the kite wouldwaver and fall like a bird shot in the wing; and the owner of the kite,and all the fellows who had no kites, would run to get it where it camedown, perhaps a mile or more away. It usually came down in a tree, andthey had to climb for it; but sometimes it lodged so high that no onecould reach it; and then it was slowly beaten and washed away in thewinds and rains, and its long tail left streaming all winter from thenaked bough where it had caught. It was so good for kites on theCommons, because there were no trees there, and not even fences, but avast open stretch of level grass, which the cows and geese kept croppedto the earth; and for the most part the boys had no trouble with theirkites there. Some of them had paper fringe pasted round the edges oftheir kites; this made a fine rattling as the kite rose, and when thekite stood, at the end of its string, you could hear the humming if youput your ear to the twine. But the most fun was sending up messengers.The messengers were cut out of thick paper, with a slit at one side, soas to slip over the string, which would be pulled level long enough togive the messenger a good start, and then released, when the wind wouldcatch the little circle, and drive it up the long curving incline tillit reached the kite.
KITE TIME.]
It was thought a great thing in a kite to pull, and it was a favor toanother boy to let him take hold of your string and feel how your kitepulled. If you wanted to play mumble-the-peg, or anything, while yourkite was up, you tied it to a stake in the ground, or gave it to someother fellow to hold; there were always lots of fellows eager to holdit. But you had to be careful how you let a little fellow hold it; for,if it was a very powerful kite, it would take him up. It was not certainjust how strong a kite had to be to take a small boy up, and nobody hadever seen a kite do it, but everybody expected to see it.
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