upon a
little arrow-point.

[Illustration: THE HATCHET.]

Whoever has made a collection, be it of postage stamps or birds' eggs,
knows full well how securing one coveted specimen but increases eagerness
for others; and so was it with me, that pleasant afternoon. Just one
pretty arrow-point cured me of my laziness, banished every trace of
fatigue, and filled me with the interest of eager search; and I dug and
sifted and washed the sandy soil for yards along the brook-side, until I
had gathered at least a score of curious relics of the long-departed red
men, or rather of the games and sports and pastimes of the red men's hardy
and active children.

[Illustration: ARROW-HEADS.]

For centuries before Columbus discovered San Salvador, the red men (or
Indians, as they are usually called) roamed over all the great continent
of North America, and, having no knowledge of iron as a metal, they were
forced to make of stone or bone all their weapons, hunting and household
implements. From this fact they are called, when referring to those early
times, a stone-age people, and so, of course, the boys and girls of that
time were stone-age children.

But it is not to be supposed that because the children of savages they
were altogether unlike the youngsters of to-day. In one respect, at least,
they were quite the same--they were very fond of play.

Their play, however, was not like the games of to-day, as you may see by
the pictures of their toys. We might, perhaps, call the principal game of
the boys "Playing Man," for the little stone implements, here pictured,
are only miniatures of the great stone axes and long spear-points of their
fathers.

In one particular these old-time children were really in advance of the
youngsters of to-day; they not only did, in play, what their parents did
in earnest, but they realized, in part, the results of their playful
labor. A good old Moravian missionary, who labored hard to convert these
Indians to Christianity, says: "Little boys are frequently seen wading in
shallow brooks, shooting small fishes with their bows and arrows." Going
a-fishing, then, as now, was good fun; but to shoot fishes with a bow and
arrow is not an easy thing to do, and this is one way these stone-age
children played, and played to better advantage than most of my young
readers can.

Among the stone-age children's toys that I gathered that afternoon, were
those of which we have pictures. The first is a very pretty