They throw these like dice; they slap their
hands together with the raking gesture of the crap-player, and utter
ejaculations in which numeral adjectives predominate, and which must
be similar to "lucky six" and kindred expressions.

Following the crap game there is usually a season of devotion to a
kind of solitaire which is played with shells on a circular board,
scooped out into a series of little cup-like depressions. They will
amuse themselves with this for hours at a time. The shells are moved
from cup to cup, and other shells are thrown like dice to determine
how the shells are to progress.

The commonest form of child gambling, however, is that of pitching
coppers on the head and tail plan. You may see twenty or more games
of this sort at any time around a primary school. Sometimes the game
ends in a fight. Sometimes the biggest urchin gathers up everything
in sight and escapes on the ringing of the bell, leaving his howling
victims behind.

Not unnaturally, in consideration of the heat, there is comparatively
little enthusiasm for rough sport. The only very active play in which
little boys and girls engage, is leap frog, which differs slightly
from the game in our own country.

Two children sit upon the ground and clasp their right hands. A leader
starts out, clears this barrier, and all the rest of the players
follow. Then one of the sitting children clasps his unoccupied left
hand upon the upraised thumb of his companion, thus raising the height
of the barrier by the width of the palm. The line starts again and
all jump this. Then the second sitter adds his palm and thumb to the
barrier, and the line of players attack this. It is more than likely
that some one will fail to clear this last barrier, and the one who
does so squats down, pressing close to the other two, and puts in his
grimy little paw and thumb. So they continue to raise the height of
the barrier till, at last, nobody can jump it.

When they play _drop the handkerchief_, Filipino children squat
upon their heels in a circle instead of standing. They have also the
familiar "_King William was King James's Son_"; I do not know whether
the words in the vernacular which they use are the equivalent of ours
or not. The air, at least, is the one with which we are all familiar.

They have one more game which seems to be something like our
_hop-scotch_ but more complicated. The diagram, which is roughly
scratched out on the ground, is quite an exten