th
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 it 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
citizen's character for cleverness or meanness was fixed by his
walking round or over the rings. Cleverness was used in the Virginia
sense for amiability; a person who was clever in the English sense was
smart.

There were many games of ball. Two-cornered cat was played by four boys:
two to bat, and two behind the batters to catch and pitch.
Three-cornered cat was, I believe, the game which has since grown into
base-ball, and was even then sometimes called so. But soak-about was the
favorite game at school, and it simply consisted of hitting any other
boy you could with the ball when you could get it. Foot-ball was always
played with a bladder, and it came in season with the cold weather when
the putting up of beef began; the business was practically regarded by
the boys as one undertaken to supply them with bladders for foot-balls.

When the warm weather came on in April, and the boys got off their s