y as checkers.
So is a play, sometimes, but very improperly, called dice, in which two
parties play with a small bundle of wooden pins, not unlike knitting
pins in shape, but shorter.

The writer to whom I have referred above recommends nine-pins and balls
of proper size, as highly useful both for diversion and exercise. If
they can be used without leading to bad habits and bad associations, I
think they may be useful.

For girls, who demand a great deal more of exercise, both within doors
and without, skipping the rope is an excellent amusement. So also is
swinging. Both of these exercises may be used either out of doors, or
in the nursery.

Trundling a hoop I have always regarded as an amusing out-of-door
exercise; and I am not sorry when I sometimes see girls, as well as
boys, engaged in it, under the eye of their mothers and teachers.

Playing ball, of which there are many different games, and flying kites,
employ a large proportion if not all of the muscles of the body, in such
a manner as is likely to confirm the strength, and greatly improve the
health. The same may be said of skating in the winter, and swimming in
the summer. But these last are exercises over which the mother cannot,
ordinarily, have very much control.

Under the head of amusements, it only remains for me to speak of a few
juvenile employments of a mixed nature. Of these I shall treat very
briefly, as they are a branch of the subject which does not necessarily
come within the compass of my present plan. They are exercises, too,
which should more properly come under the head of Infantile Instruction.

Dissected maps afford children of every age a great fund of amusement;
but much caution is necessary, with those that are very young, not to
discourage or confound them by showing them too many at once. Thus if
we cut in pieces the map of one of the smaller United States, at the
county lines, or the whole United States, at the state lines, it is
quite as many divisions as they can manage. Cut up as large a state,
even, as Pennsylvania or New York is, into counties, and try to lead
them to amuse themselves by putting together so large a number, many of
which must inevitably very closely resemble each other, and it is ten to
one but you bewilder, and even perplex and discourage them. The same
results would follow from cutting up even the whole of a large county,
or a small state, into towns. I have usually begun with little children,
by requiri