The Right Spirit

 It is not necessary to gamble with marbles, as many suppose, and in fact there is little doubt that the game was first played " for keeps " centuries ago when pebbles were used for marbles and the pebbles won were only valued as trophies or counters. In reality a marble won is a point won in the game, and it is not necessary to keep the marbles after the game is over, any more than it is necessary to keep the balls and bats of the defeated base-ball players or the balls and rackets of the defeated lawn-tennis players or the foot-ball of the defeated foot-ball players. What the American boy plays for is to win the game, not the implements of the sport. It is only the occasional "tough" who manages to get into the game who has the real instincts of the gambler, and he is the boy who always cries "grinder," and "snatches up " or " swipes " the marbles of smaller or more timid lads. Such a boy should be avoided just as respectable men avoid the gambler and black-leg.

 Knuckle Dabsters

A Marble Bag

         Your sister, mother, aunt, or grandmother can in a few moments stitch two pieces of thick, soft cloth together for you when marble time arrives, and if they will add to this favor by making you a marble bag [Fig 3,4] with strings to draw the mouth together, you are ready for the season. The marble bag should be small enough to slip into your pocket, where it will prevent the loss of many marbles that might work their way through that hole that is always to be found in a boy's pocket after he has worn his clothes for a short time.

           I remember how I used to plan leather and buckskin pockets that would not wear out, and I made up my mind that when I was old enough to make money and buy my own clothes the tailor should be instructed to put in leather pockets. Alas! when I reached that age it took so much cash to buy the clothes that there was never enough in the pockets to wear them out.

Whom to Play Marbles With

         If Little Lord Fauntleroy had been born in a Western town his life would not have been worth living. He was a gentle little " sissy "aristocrat, who would never have been tolerated by the " Huck " Finns and Tom Sawyers inhabiting the valleys of the Mississippi and its tributaries.

 Imagine, if you can, such a little chap wearing the clothes with which Mr. Birch, in his beautiful illustrations, so appropriately dressed him; imagine him down on one knee, with his girlish hand chapped with the wind and the cracks filled with grime, knuckling down and lofting on the ducks in the middle of a bull ring, or with doubled fists standing over his marbles, defending his property against some young highwayman from the rolling mill on the river bank! 

As the New York boys would say, " He wouldn't be in it." No, the house is the place for him. This is a rough world, and it requires experiences outside of a gentle, loving mother's care or the sweet lady-like tuition of a governess to fit a lad for the battle of life.

 What we want for a playmate is a fair and square fellow, who will stand by a friend through thick and thin, and, without being quarrelsome, defend his rights and never " weaken." It is unnecessary to say that such a lad's love of justice will always prevent him from imposing upon smaller boys and his manliness will cause him to treat his companion and the girls with courtesy. You need not watch him in any game, for he will not cheat. Among my old schoolmates I have known many such fellows, and, to a man, they are all good fellows now; good citizens, good fathers, and they still enjoy watching the boys play the games in which they used to excel themselves.

How Marbles Were First Made

         With the aid of frost and sun nature splits the rocks, dropping the fragments into the water, and the ever moving water rolls the fragments over each other and against ot her stones until they become smooth pebbles, many of which are almost as round as the marbles sold in stores. Away back before history was written the children used these natural marbles to play with, but there is nothing to tell us whether they used a `1 long ring " or a " bull ring," or what rules governed the game.

 When the Tammany Halls of Rome and the citizens in general became wicked and corrupt it made nature very ill, and she broke out in volcanoes. While the terrible fires from the bowels of the earth were spouting and scattering their ashes and lava over towns and cities, Pompeii was buried with all its streets and houses and with some of its people and dogs. Among the many curious things found in the ruins by the antiquarians who have unearthed the old cities were-what? Marbles left by the boys in their flight from the doomed city, and, I think, if the truth were known, some of the little rascals delayed their departure long enough to secure and carry away with them their " megs," as the New York boys would call the ancient marbles.

Marbles in America

One hundred and twenty-eight years after Columbus discovered America, and when many of the ancestors of this generation of boys could call themselves Americans, the Dutchmen imported marbles to England, and it is very probable the old Knickerbockers introduced them here, but it matters little who had the honor of introducing them to America. They came to stay, and now, from California to Maine, and from the Calumet and Hecla mines at Red Jacket, Mich., to New Orleans, the boys all play marbles.

Made Abroad Nowadays

Where do they all come from? Some of you win them, some of you trade postage-stamps for them, but some person bought them, probably, at the little store around the corner.

 When I attended the Eighth Street District School in Cincinnati we used to replenish our stock from "Malaney's." I do not recollect the real name of the proprietor of the little store, but that is the name it went by among the boys. There we bought our butterscotch and bull's-eye candy; our match-sticks for kites, our elastic bands for slings, our tops and top-strings.

Local Names of Marbles

But Malaney must have secured his supply from some. where, because I know he did not make them himself, and he always had a quantity on hand of "potteries," "plasters," " chinas," " crystals," " agates," " alleys," and " commies."

 Atlantic coast boys do not use these names, but they use the same marbles. We had a tradition that the potteries were made at a pottery near the Brighton Hotel in the suburbs of Cincinnati. What truth, if any, there is in this tradition I am unable to state. In New York I seldom see this rich brown mottled marble, whose glossy surface is marked by three rough dots.

 The "crockery" never had the splashes of white that distinguished the "burned agate" of New York, nor the green of the "moss agate" of the same place. Both of the latter were unknown to the Western boys twenty-five years ago. 

At the beginning of this century marbles were some times called "bowls," and all came from Nuremberg, down the Rhine to Rotterdam, and thence to all other parts of Europe.