r which was not directly literary,
but historical, due to his familiarity with English dates. He wrote
Twichell:

Day before yesterday, feeling not in condition for writing, I left
the study, but I couldn't hold in--had to do something; so I spent
eight hours in the sun with a yardstick, measuring off the reigns of
the English kings on the roads in these grounds, from William the
Conqueror to 1883, calculating to invent an open-air game which
shall fill the children's heads with dates without study. I give
each king's reign one foot of space to the year and drive one stake
in the ground to mark the beginning of each reign, and I make the
children call the stake by the king's name. You can stand in the
door and take a bird's-eye view of English monarchy, from the
Conqueror to Edward IV.; then you can turn and follow the road up
the hill to the study and beyond with an opera-glass, and bird's-eye
view the rest of it to 1883.

You can mark the sharp difference in the length of reigns by the
varying distances of the stakes apart. You can see Richard II., two
feet; Oliver Cromwell, two feet; James II., three feet, and so on
--and then big skips; pegs standing forty-five, forty-six, fifty,
fifty-six, and sixty feet apart (Elizabeth, Victoria, Edward III.,
Henry III., and George III.). By the way, third's a lucky number
for length of days, isn't it? Yes, sir; by my scheme you get a
realizing notion of the time occupied by reigns.

The reason it took me eight hours was because, with little Jean's
interrupting assistance, I had to measure from the Conquest to the
end of Henry VI. three times over, and besides I had to whittle out
all those pegs.

I did a full day's work and a third over, yesterday, but was full of
my game after I went to bed trying to fit it for indoors. So I
didn't get to sleep till pretty late; but when I did go off I had
contrived a new way to play my history game with cards and a board.

We may be sure the idea of the game would possess him, once it got a
fair start like that. He decided to save the human race that year with
a history game. When he had got the children fairly going and interested
in playing it, he adapted it to a cribbage-board, and spent his days and
nights working it out and perfecting it to a degree where the world at
large might learn all the facts of all the histories