r; the first thing he sold was a
pound of M."

Each has a turn to guess what M may stand for--some kind of meat the
butcher usually sells. Should the first person in the circle guess the
correct meaning, it becomes his or her turn to ask the next question.
Baker or grocer, chemist or draper, in fact any trade may be selected by
the person whose turn it is to put the question.

AN ARMENIAN CHILD'S GAME

of a thousand years ago is still played by the Christian children of
Asia. Like our Western street games of tops and tip-cats it perpetuates
the cruelties of the persecutions which their ancestors suffered, a most
terrible instance of the child's game outliving the serious performance
of that which it represented. The frontier of the Armenian kingdom had
been destroyed by one of the Christian Byzantine emperors, thus enabling
the Seljouck Turks to pass through the Armenian kingdom, and deal out to
the unoffending Asiatic Christians the terrors of pillage by firing
their peaceful homesteads. England, France, and Germany have a
modification of the game. In France the youngsters hand round a burning
faggot, exclaiming--

"Petit bonhomme vit encore."

German children play a similar game with a stick instead of a firebrand,
and Halliwell gives the rhyme describing the English game as--

"Jack's alive and in very good health,
If he die in your hand you must look to yourself."

RUSSIAN SUPERSTITION.

An old custom of the Russian maiden--identical with the English girl's
habit on St. Valentine's Day--is still in vogue. Going into the street
she asks the first man she meets his Christian name, believing that her
future husband will be sure to bear the same.

CHAPTER III.

JEWISH RHYMES.

Sports, games, and amusements were unknown until a late day in Jewish
history. Within the walls of Jerusalem, or indeed throughout the whole
length of Palestine, no theatre, circus, hippodrome, nor even gallery
was to be found, until Jason, the Greek-Jew of the Maccabees dynasty,
became ruler, and built a place of exercise under the very tower of the
Temple itself. (2 Macc. iv. 10-14.) Herod subsequently completed what
Jason had begun, and erected a hippodrome within the Holy City to the
delight of the younger Hebrews, later building another at Caesarea.

Even the festivals were not of Mosaic appointment, and it is not
difficult to understand how certain gloomy censors and theologians
condemn merriment.