's-buff' ourselves." Sure enough, father is
playing it now, if he only knew it. Much of our time in life we go about
blindfolded, stumbling over mistakes, trying to catch things that we miss,
while people stand round the ring and titter, and break out with
half-suppressed laughter, and push us ahead, and twitch the corner of our
eye-bandage. After a while we vehemently clutch something with both hands,
and announce to the world our capture; the blindfold is taken from our
eyes, and, amid the shouts of the surrounding spectators, we find we have,
after all, caught the wrong thing. What is that but "blind-man's buff" over
again?

You say, "Jenny and Harry, go to bed. It seems so silly for you to sit
there making two parallel lines perpendicular, and two parallel lines
horizontal, and filling up the blanks with crosses and o's, and then crying
out 'tick-tack-to.'" My dear man, you are doing every day in business just
what your children are doing in the nursery. You find it hard to get things
into a line. You have started out for worldly success. You get one or two
things fixed but that is not what you want. After a while you have had two
fine successes. You say, "If I can have a third success, I will come out
ahead." But somebody is busy on the same slate, trying to hinder you
getting the game. You mark; he marks. I think you will win. To the first
and second success which you have already gained you add the third, for
which you have long been seeking. The game is yours, and you clap your
hands, and hunch your opponent in the side, and shout,

"Tick-tack-to,
Three in a row."

The funniest play that I ever joined in at school, and one that sets me
a-laughing now as I think of it so I can hardly write, is "leap-frog." It
is unartistic and homely. It is so humiliating to the boy who bends himself
over and puts his hands down on his knees, and it is so perilous to the boy
who, placing his hands on the stooped shoulders, attempts to fly over. But
I always preferred the risk of the one who attempted the leap rather than
the humiliation of the one who consented to be vaulted over. It was often
the case that we both failed in our part and we went down together. For
this Jack Snyder carried a grudge against me and would not speak, because
he said I pushed him down a-purpose. But I hope he has forgiven me by this
time, for he has been out as a missionary. Indeed, if Jack will come this
way, I will right the wrong of olden time