heart, I suppose, and because it was not thought well to keep him up
too strictly; and I suspect it would have been useless to forbid his
playing for keeps, though he came to have a bad conscience about it
before he gave it up. There were three kinds of games at marbles which
the boys played: one with a long ring marked out on the ground, and a
base some distance off, which you began to shoot from; another with a
round ring, whose line formed the base; and another with holes, three or
five, hollowed in the earth at equal distances from each other, which
was called knucks. You could play for keeps in all these games; and in
knucks, if you won, you had a shot or shots at the knuckles of the
fellow who lost, and who was obliged to hold them down for you to shoot
at. Fellows who were mean would twitch their knuckles away when they saw
your toy coming, and run; but most of them took their punishment with
the savage pluck of so many little Sioux. As the game began in the raw
cold of the earliest spring, every boy had chapped hands, and nearly
every one had the skin worn off the knuckle of his middle finger from
resting it on the ground when he shot. You could use a knuckle-dabster
of fur or cloth to rest your hand on, but is was considered effeminate,
and in the excitement you were apt to forget it, anyway. Marbles were
always very exciting, and were played with a clamor as incessant as that
of a blackbird roost. A great many points were always coming up: whether
a boy took-up, or edged, beyond the very place where his toy lay when he
shot; whether he knuckled down, or kept his hand on the ground, in
shooting; whether, when another boy's toy drove one marble against
another and knocked both out of the ring, he holloed "Fen doubs!" before
the other fellow holloed "Doubs!" whether a marble was in or out of the
ring, and whether the umpire's decision was just or not. The gambling
and the quarrelling went on till the second-bell rang for school, and
began again as soon as the boys could get back to their rings when
school let out. The rings were usually marked on the ground with a
stick, 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 were
always bored by twirling round on your boot-heel. This helped a boy to
wear out his boots very rapidly, but that was what his boots were made
for, just as the sidewalks were made for the boys' marble-rings, and a
citi