boy is front of him
and lifts his knees off the ground. The boy in front walking on his
hands, and the boy behind trundling him along, make the greatest haste
possible. The pair who first reach the goal are the winners.

Races may be run, hopping on the right foot, or on the left, or with
both together, or with first a hop and then a jump. It is well to
appoint one of the boys umpire during these odd races, to see that
they are run fairly and none of the rules agreed upon are broken.

A sack race is fun. Each boy is tied into a gunny sack and shuffles
his way to the goal. A substitute for this is the three-legged race,
run by two boys. They stand side by side, and the right leg of one is
tied to the left leg of the other and so with three legs between them
they must somehow get to the goal.

Hands and knees races, backward races (run with your back to the
goal), races with burdens on your back, or balancing a pole across
your hand or on the tip of your finger--there is no limit to the ones
you can invent.

But the best ones, after all, are the plain old trials of speed. There
is no more fun than a good running race, and a walking race is next to
it. Bicycle races are apt to be dangerous and a course that is very
wide should always be selected.

Quoits

Quoits is a game not played as much as it should be by American boys.
It is easy to arrange, for although there is an outfit sold in the
toy shops, a home-made one is just as good. It consists of a
collection of horseshoes and a stake driven in the ground--certainly
not a difficult apparatus to assemble. The stake should not project
more than an inch above the ground and the players, according to the
grown-up rules, should stand about fifteen yards away from the stake
(which is usually called "the hub"). But for boys the distance from
the hub can be determined by your skill. You may increase it as you
improve with practice. Every player has a certain number of quoits
(horseshoes) and standing at a fixed distance from the hub he tries to
pitch them so that they will go as near as possible to the hub. Some
very good players can cast a quoit so that it falls about the hub.
This is called a "ringer" and counts ten, but it is a rare shot. Every
one pitches his quoits and then all go to the hub and reckon up the
score. The one whose quoits lie nearest to the hub counts one point
for each quoit, but each quoit entitled to count must be nearer the
hub than any of the o