CHILDREN AT PLAY. BY N. HUDSON MOORE, EVERY now and then a boy that I know comes bouncing into my study full of excitement, and says: 66 "Oh, I know a new game!" "A new one," I say, are you sure of that." "Yes indeedy, it's a new one, this is the way it goes," and then he shows or tells me of some game like hop-scotch or leap-frog, which is new to him because he has just grown up to it, but which has been played by children in many countries for hundreds and hundreds of years. How do I know this is so? Why because I am beginning to believe that there is nothing new under the sun except perhaps just radium and the uses to which we put electricity, which is in itself as old as the world. But about games being old, I not only found that out in pictures and books but I am able now to show you. Here is a queer old picture painted by Pieter Brueghel, called "The Elder," who was born at Brueghel, near Brenda on the river Merk, in the Netherlands, in the year 1510. He died in 1569, so this picture was painted somewhere between 1530 and 1569, for I allow him to be twenty years old, and he was doubtless older, before he could have done it. The picture is now in Vienna, Austria, and is called "Children at Play." Just for fun let's see how many games they are playing that you and I know and can play ourselves. Let us begin way up the street. I see a troop of boys playing soldier, the Captain leads with a broom in his hands for a sword. Those girls sitting near are either playing "lady," or "school," I am not sure which. Then there are two parties doing "follow-my-leader" and soldier, and there are others in the street playing "blind-mans-buff," marbles and walking on stilts. will soon stop, for see, the old lady is leaning from the window and pouring water on them from a watering-can! A very good way to stop a quarrel I think. How do you feel about it, boys? There is one chap I do feel sorry for and that is the one who is trying to slide down that awfully steep cellar door. It is not half so nice as some I know that go down like a gentle hill. When we come out into the square, things are even livelier than in the street. There are two boys "doing stunts" on the hitching-bar, another who looks as if he were playing “duck on a rock" only the rock is an iron pot, and there is a whole class of little girls dressed as nuns. Two of them carry a basket. Perhaps after all, they have just thrown their cloaks over their heads and are going on a picnic. Look at the "leap-frog"! By the way, do you know what that kind of trousers which so many of the boys wear is called? Hose, or hosen, and they were stockings and trousers all in one piece, sometimes with leather soles to them instead of shoes. They called the jackets, doublets, or jerkins, and a great many of them were of leather, so you see although mother may have had a bad time keeping the knees and toes of the hosen mended, the leather doublets wore pretty well. Besides there was another good thing. Mother did not have to sew on buttons, because they did not use them. The different parts of the clothes were tied together with strings or lacings. These lacings often had metal tips to prevent their getting ragged or raveled, and then they were called "points." If you had lived then and were going out in a hurry to play with the boys you would not have run to mother crying: "Please button my coat," but you would Two boys are quarreling, but I think that they very likely have gone to her and said: "Please Madam, truss my points." I do not know just what those children sitting in two rows by the fence are playing, with the two boys jumping down the middle. That group near them seem to be having fine sport playing "Where's my Rachel?" The game those six boys in the middle of the picture are playing must have been called "Tournament," or "Tourney," for those were the days when the great Tournaments or Jousts were held, which you can read about in Sir Walter Scott's "Ivanhoe." The two boys bending down were horses and they kept their balance by holding on to the stout belts of the boys in front of them. Then two other boys mounted on their backs and were the knights. They struggled as to who should get that leather strap without being "unhorsed," the "horses" themselves meanwhile prancing and curvetting about. Not far from them a boy and a girl have "made a chair" for little sister who is tired, and on the bench by the house a boy is playing with a tame dove, another one is whirling a toy by pulling a string, while two girls within doors are doing what? Dressing dolls, I do believe! Right down in front is "ride-a-cockhorse," "ring-toss," rolling hoop, riding a barrel, (did you ever try that?) and blowing up a bladder. This bladder was used in a rough game. It was blown up, the neck of it tied with a string and the other end of the string tied to a stick. Then the one who had the bladder tried to hit someone with it, you can see them playing it up the street. The boy in front who is blowing up the bladder seems to have on some kind of a Dunce-cap. I noticed several others with the same kind of paper on their caps. Near the bladder boy is another kind of tournament game. In this one it takes three boys to make the horse, two bending over and one to hold on to. Two boys ride on each horse. This was a rough game, and you see one boy has been hurt, and they are putting him on the great beam. A little girl is playing store on one corner of this beam. What a pretty pair of scales she has, I wonder if mother lent them to her. Two boys seem to have had some trouble playing with a set of blocks, and just beyond them a group are having "London Bridge," or that is what we call it to-day, of course Dutch children had another name for it. They are having a good time playing it, I judge, for their mouths are all wide open. In the doorway a girl is balancing a broom on her finger, but what those seated on the steps are playing, I cannot make out. I almost expect to see that basket drop out of the window, perhaps it has cookies in it. If it was full of cookies and dropped, how those children, who are playing whip the top, would run out! There are two little girls playing at tilting with long sticks with arms on them, two or three others "making cheeses" and nearby is a lovely mud hut with a hole to crawl in. Three boys tired of play are having a good swim in the creek. I think that this is the busiest scene I ever saw in a picture, and I should not be surprised if there were several sports going on which I have overlooked. Can you find any? THE BOYS' LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. BY HELEN NICOLAY. CHAPTER X. THE MAN WHO WAS PRESIDENT. THE way Mr. Lincoln signed his most important state paper was thoroughly in keeping with his nature. He hated all shams and show and pretense, and being absolutely without affectation of any kind, it would never have occurred to him to pose for effect while signing the Emancipation Proclamation or any other paper. He never thought of himself as a President to be set up before a multitude and admired, but always as a President charged with duties which he owed to every citizen. In fulfilling these he did not stand upon ceremony, but took the most direct way to the end he had in view. It is not often that a President pleads a cause before Congress. Mr. Lincoln did not find it beneath his dignity at one time to go in person to the Capitol, and calling a number of the leading senators and representatives around him, explain to them, with the aid of a map, his reasons for believing that the final stand of the Confederates would be made in that part of the South where the seven states of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky and West Virginia come to gether; and strive in this way to interest them in the sad plight of the loyal people of Tennessee who were being persecuted by the Confederate government, but whose mountainous region might, with a little help, be made a citadel of Union strength in the very heart of this stronghold of rebellion. In his private life he was entirely simple and unaffected. Yet he had a deep sense of what was due his office, and took part with becoming dignity in all official or public ceremonies. He received the diplomats sent to Washington from the courts of Europe with a formal and quiet reserve which made them realize at once that although this son of the people had been born in a log cabin, he was ruler of a great nation, and more than that, was a prince by right of his own fine instincts and good breeding. He was ever gentle and courteous, but with a few quiet words he could silence a bore who had come meaning to talk to him for hours. For his friends he had always a ready smile and a quaintly turned phrase. His sense of humor was his salvation. Without it he must have died of the strain and anxiety of the Civil War. There was something almost pathetic in the way he would snatch a moment from his pressing duties and gravest cares to listen to a good story or indulge in a hearty laugh. Some people could not understand this. To one member of his cabinet at least, it seemed strange and unfitting that he should read aloud to them a chapter from a humorous book by Artemus Ward before taking up the weighty matter of the Emancipation Proclamation. From their point of view it showed lack of feeling and frivolity of character, when, in truth, it was the very depth of his feeling, and the intensity of his distress at the suffering of the war, that lead him to seek relief in laughter, to gather from the comedy of life strength to go on and meet its sternest tragedy. He was a social man. He could not fully enjoy even a jest alone. He wanted somebody. to share the pleasure with him. Often when care kept him awake late at night he would wander through the halls of the Executive Mansion, and coming to the room where his secretaries were still at work, would stop to read to them some poem, or a passage from Shakspere, or a bit from one of the humorous books in which he found relief. No one knew better than he what could be cured, and what must be patiently endured. To every difficulty that he could remove he gave cheerful |