The St. Mary banner., 1901-07-06
MARBLES AND THE BOYS.
WHY THE CAME is PLAYED ONLY
IN SPRING IS A MYSTERY.

A Juvenile Sport Calling For Stead,
Hand, Good Eye For Distance and 4:
Cool Head Good Sign to Re Expert a
Marbles.
A boy and his marbles are INSOFAR
able in the spring of the year, and il
the season happens to be forward and
| the ground bare and soft in the last
| days of winter, the marbles of course
come out from their hiding places even
before March appears. Just why
marbles should be played in the spring
| and not so much, if at all, in the sum
| mer and fall no one can tell-not even
the boys. 1t always has been so, and
doubtless always will be so. Every.
thing in this world has its season
from Shakespeare clubs to horsechest
nuts and marbles.
There used to be several styles OF
play. There was the game in which
you rolled the marbles into a hole in
the ground. A smooth, level track be-
tween the boy and the hole, handful
Of marbles carefully spread over the
palm, and the boy did the rest. The
best boy put the most marbles into
the hole, and also got the other boy S
marbles. Then there was the game
which used to be called ''harpooning;
we do not know whether it is called
harpooning now or not, but 1t was a
tip-top game in it's way. A certain
number Of feet separated the boy and
the target which was marble or an
agate placed on the ground-or the
target might be "blaster." Does any
one know about "blasters' nowadays
They were white marbles, made in
different sizes, and often had little
red rings running around them. The
dictionaries are silent about "blast-
ers," in the marble sense, which is a
very serious omission. Well, in
''harpooning" the boy tried to hit the
target, whatever it was. by throwing
a marble at it through the air. If he
hit the target he took it; if he failed
to hit it he lost the marble he had
thrown.
There were still other games. but
the Republican confesses that it may
be somewhat rusty on the various
modes of play. We have vivid mem
ory, however, of swapping game in
which you placed a marble. an agate
Of a plaster" between the thumb and
forefinger and snapped it along the
ground to hit some other marble, agate
or "blaster." There were all kinds of
boys and all kinds of thumbs. Some
boys could get no more snap out Of their
thumbs than they could out Of a bale
of hay; other boys had the faculty of
making their thumbs work like steel
trap when the bait is nibbled. The
steel-trap thumb was a wonder, and it
generally made it's possessor a capital
ist in no time.
We wish to pay tribute to marbles
as. one of the "dandiest" of juvenile
games. 1t is pure game Of skill call
ing for steady hand, good eye for
distance and cool head. If your boy
is expert at marbles you can fairly be
proud of him, because of the qualities
which he displays-but, at the same
time, it might be we'll to investigate
his case.
How about playing for keers?"
That is what we were coming to.
There is, it must be admitted, a shad-
ow over the great name of marbles.
The shadow has always been there.
Marbles cost money and when boy
plays for keeps he CANDLES. Here is
a moral issue that each spring agitates
the maternal and the paternal breast.
There are mothers around town today
who are asking II 1t is not very wrong
to play for keeps; and really. it is
the very impressionable quality of the
juvenile mind. AS the religious press
does not bear heavily upon this de-
tail of home training, it may be we'll
for daily newspaper to express its
view on the subject. Playing for
keeps Is wrong. and nothing will ever
make it right And Thomas is a bad
boy when he does it.
In a former generation of marble
players which we happen to know
about, there were always two groups
Of boys, the boys who played for keeps
and the boys who played for fun. The
boys who played for fun followed the
rule that each player, at the end of the
game should take back all the marbles
with which he entered it. The only
playing for keeps those boys were
guilty of was with acorns. which were
to be had by the bushel and possessed
no money value. OF course, they were
the good boys" but in those days
they were not unknown and their ex-
istence was evidence of the fact that
in a large number of homes there was
a moral atmosphere which made incip-
lent gambling a violation Of moral
law. In those homes the standard
was held high and the boy, in violating
it, knew that he was defying parental
ideas of right and wrong.
Has there been a change within the
past generation in this respect? 1t is
said that nowadays the group OF
good boys" has largely disappeared
from the marble business, and that
playing for keeps has become uni
versal among boys from all sorts of
homes, If that be true, it argues a