Round Top

“ Fig. 32 shows the way in which a top spins. Looked at from above, if the top is spinning in the direction of the hands of a watch, we know from the fourth statement of our wall sheet, or by mere observation, that it also precesses in the direction of the hands {71}of a watch; that is, its precession is such as to make the peg roll at B into the paper. For you will observe that the peg is rolling round a circular path on the table, G being nearly motionless, and the axis A G A describing nearly a cone in space whose vertex is G, above the table. ”

“ The top which keeps up for the longest time scores the first point. When the first round is finished set the tops twirling again, commencing with the orange one and taking the red one last. Mark down the score of the winning top and give them all a third and last trial, leading with the green top and bringing in the orange last. The top which gains the greatest 134number of point wins the game. Should each top gain a point, the game would be a “tie,” and necessitate the playing of it all over again. ”

“ THUMB
PAGE
She stands by the clock in the corner, now:
“I wonder,” she says, “does the old clock know?”
But the great clock
Ticks!
And the grim clock
Tocks!
Away at the top of his ghostly box;
The round Full Moon (in his forehead) smiles;
But with all his wisdom, or all his wiles,
Though he knows very well,
He never will tell
Should he tick and tock till a century old
What they mean by
The Sa-archinkold!
In the great, square room, by a cheerful flame
In the fire-place, bending above her frame,
Is grandma, snapping her chalky string
Across and across a broad, bright thing. ”

“ With a sudden impetuous gesture she slid her arm about his neck, and for one lightning moment her lips touched his cheek. The next instant she had sprung free and was leaping downwards from rock to rock like a startled gazelle.
At the foot of the kopje only did she stop and wait. He was close behind her, moving with lithe, elastic strides where she had bounded.
She turned round to him boyishly. "We'll climb to the top one of these days, partner; but I'm not in training yet. Besides,—we're late for supper."
"I can wait," said Burke. ”

“ Burke did not so much as glance round. He had Kieff by the collar of his coat, and the fate of the revolver was obviously a matter of no importance to him. "Give me that horse-whip of yours, Donovan!" he said,
Kelly complied with the childlike obedience he invariably yielded to Burke. Then he fell back to Sylvia, and very gently took the revolver out of her clenched hand.
She looked at him, her eyes wide, terror-stricken. "He will kill him!" she said, in a voiceless whisper.
"Not a bit of it," said Kelly, and put his arm around her. "These poisonous vermin don't die so easy. Pity they don't." ”

“ The haze increased, seeming to press downwards upon the parched earth. The noonday was dark with gathering clouds.
At the hour of luncheon there came a slight stir in the bungalow. Mary Ann thrust her amazing visage round the door and rolled her eyes in frightened wonder at what she saw. The big baas was lying across the table, a prone, stricken figure, with his head upon his arms.
For a few seconds she stood in open-mouthed dismay, thinking him dead; for she had never seen him thus in life. Then she saw his shoulders heave convulsively, and promptly she turned and fled. ”

“ THUMB
PAGE
BLUE-BEARD.
Once on a time there was a man so hideous and ugly
That little children shrank and tried to hide when he appeared;
His eyes were fierce and prominent, his long hair stiff like bristles,
His stature was enormous, and he wore a long blue beard—
He took his name from that through all the country round about him,—
And whispered tales of dreadful deeds but helped to make him feared.
Yet he was rich, O! very rich ”

“ A roundel is wrought as a ring or a starbright sphere,
With craft of delight and with cunning of sound unsought,
That the heart of the hearer may smile if to pleasure his ear
⁠A roundel is wrought. ”

“ Given a fair chance, just a fine, long string and a smooth sidewalk—why, a top will play with a child all day long. It will twirl and whirl, never stopping to rest for long, and singing all the time its quaint little humming song to keep tune and time with its spinning. ”

“ And to the rope she hurried:—
“Pray rope hang butcher, butcher won’t kill ox,
Ox won’t drink water, water won’t quench fire,
Fire won’t burn stick, stick won’t beat dog,
Dog won’t bite kid,
Kid won’t go!
And I see by the moonlight
’Tis getting past midnight,
And time kid and I were home
An hour and a half ago.”
THUMB
PAGE
The rope swayed round for “nay!”
So to the rat she beckoned:—
“Pray rat gnaw rope, rope won’t hang butcher,
Butcher won’t kill ox, ox won’t drink water,
Water won’t quench fire, fire won’t burn stick,
Stick won’t beat dog, dog won’t bite kid,
Kid won’t go! ”

“ Friction makes the gyrostats fall, what is it that causes a top to rise? Rapid rising to the upright position is the invariable sign of rapid rotation in a top, and I recollect that when quite vertical we used to say, "She sleeps!" ”

“ But has it ever occurred to you, how much grander a thing it is for a square man to be striving his heroic best to fill a round hole—even though the result be failure!—than for a round man to slip easily and without effort into a round hole which just fits him? ”

“ You may start in business, or the professions, with your feet on the bottom rung of the ladder; it rests with you to acquire the strength to climb to the top. You can do so if you have the will and the force to back you. There is always plenty of room at the top. ”

“ If the top, when it has ceased spinning, does not roll without the circle, it must remain in the ring to be pegged at by the other boys, or he redeems it by putting in an inferior one, which is called a ‘Mull.’ When the top does not roll out, it is said to be ‘mulled.’” Mr. ”

“ Is not ambition but an endless ladder by which no height is ever climbed till the last unreachable rung is mounted? For height leads on to height, and there is no resting-place upon them, and rung doth grow upon rung, and there is no limit to the number. ”

“ The Middle Ages are dead and dust.
We will proceed with that congenial paradox which states that the seat of learning lies in the [Pg 179] head, and so discuss the most distinctive costumery of this time, the roundlet.
Now, the roundlet is one of those things which delight the clothes-hunter or the costume expert. It is the natural result of a long series of fashions for the head, and its pedigree is free from any impediment or hindrance; it is the great-grandson of the hood, which is derived from a fold in a cloak, which is the beginning of all things. ”

“ Please neglect for a short time the slight wobbling motions that occur. One observation we make is, that the top does not at first bow down in the direction of the blow. If I strike towards the south, the top bows towards the west; if I strike towards the west, the top bows down towards the north. Now the reason of this is known to all scientific men, and the principle underlying the top's behaviour is of very great {32}importance in many ways, and I hope to make it clear to you. ”

“ At the bottom, lady gives left hand to her partner, and they promenade back to places at the top of the line. (This figure is frequently omitted.) Top couple advance, courtesy and bow, then lady turns off to the right, gentleman to the left, each followed by the rest of her or his line. Top couple meet at the bottom of figure, join hands, and, raising their arms, let all the other couples pass under them towards the top of the line, till all reach their own places, except the top, who have now become the bottom couple. ”

“ The ladder was over-short, and it required an effort to heave oneself from it through the casement on to the leads. I am stout, and not so nimble as I was when younger. After one or two efforts, and after presenting from below an appearance that would have provoked laughter at any other time, I succeeded in getting through and upon the leads. ”

“ Oppressed by the sight of so much wretchedness, I turned from its contemplation, and called aloud to the gentlemen without (who had all this time been waiting to hear from us) to come up the ladder to the top of the pile of boughs. The overseer was quickly at the top of the opening, by which I had descended; and I now informed him that we had found the lady. ”

“ An expert will throw his top from him, and by the action of the string as it unwinds draw it back so that it is caught in his hand—of course, without it having touched the ground. An unopened fan is then taken in the other hand, and the top is placed upon one of its sides and spun along it. ”

“ The top is then thrown either underhand or overhand and the string jerked back while it is still in the air. The object is to knock over someone else’s top which is already spinning. Tops are spun at and just after sowing time. ”

“ A square peg forced into a round hole, he had felt like a daily outrage that long established smooth roundness into which a man of less sharply angular shape would have fitted himself, with voluptuous acquiescence, after a shrug or two. ”

“ The very same principle acts on the boys’ Tops, and is shown in a really remarkable manner by the professional Japanese top-spinners, who will place several tops upon each other, as shown in the illustration, and make them sway backwards and forwards in the most extraordinary manner, sometimes being all upright, and sometimes leaning almost at right angles to each other. ”

“ The ice top, without a stem, and simply a block of wood in shape of a top, is spun with a string, but is kept going by whipping.
Another toy which foreigners call a top is entirely different from anything we see in the West. ”

“ Every time you come to see me you must bring a skein of silk with you, and I will make a ladder of them, and when it is finished I will climb down by it, and you will take me away on your horse.’
They arranged that, till the ladder was ready, he was to come to her every evening, because the old woman was with her during the day. ”

“ Some swarm up this ladder as boys up a pole, hand over hand, a good grip with the knees, a confident, saucy, upward look. Others stop in medio, look round, sigh, or are satisfied, and gravely descend to refresh themselves with bread and cheese for life. ”

“ We are glad you find The Great Round World interesting.
Editor.
Dear Mr. Editor:
I have had only two of your papers. I like them very much. I am going to save them and have them bound. It is so muddy here, and it was muddier last week; the mud was half a foot deep. There is a man that runs a dray-wagon here, and he has two little mules. He whips them almost to death.
A little while ago a poor dog went by with a tin can tied to his tail; the boys that did this filled it full of dirt, and the poor dog was half scared to death. ”

“ But there must be ways, for other men have found them, of beginning at the lower end of the ladder, even very low down, even in the dust, and climbing steadily to a height that would satisfy the climber’s ambition. ”

“ The young learns of the old, mounts the ladder they mounted and the ladder they made. The reverse is seldom true, that the old climbs the ladder which the young have made, and over that storms new heights. ”

“ Every step in the ladder of life is thronged with climbers ready to reach the next, and although some be twenty rounds above others, they are as restlessly unhappy in their high position, and as restlessly desirous of getting a foot higher, as those who are so far beneath them. ”

“ There stands the Maiden, steep, sandy, and terrible, with her face scarred and seamed with black timbers, but alas! we have no longer to drive over her crown: we hardly do more than skirt the fringe of her garment. In old days the tee was right beneath the highest pinnacle, and sheer terror made the shot formidable, but the tee-shots to the fifth endangered the lives of those driving to the sixth, and the tee had to be put far away to the right. ”

“ Puss in the Corner.—A certain number of boys or girls stand singly at different distances; suppose we say for instance one at each of the four corners of a room, a fifth is then placed in the middle; the business of those who occupy the corners is to keep changing their positions in a regular succession, and of the out-player, to gain one of the corners vacated by the change before the successor can reach it: if done he retains it, and the loser takes his place in the middle. ”

“ The chief difference between the upper berths and the lower is that the uppers have to be reached by a short stepladder and are not convenient to fat, gouty, or unathletic persons, while those who wake early and like to look upon the prairie, or what once was that, have a window at the bottom as the people in the top have not. ”

“ Sir, said the hermit unto Sir Gawaine, the fair meadow and the rack therein ought to be understood the Round Table, and by the meadow ought to be understood humility and patience, those be the things which be always green and quick; for men may no time overcome humility and patience, therefore was the Round Table founded ”

“ The whole great round, peopled by at least ten thousand beings, is divided exactly by the sun and the shadow—sol y sombra; and from our cool place we look at the vivid orange sand of the half arena in sunlight, and the tiers of seats beyond, where swarms of paper fans (red, yellow, purple, and green) are wielded to shelter the eyes of those in the cheaper section, or bring air to their lungs. No connected account of a bull tourney can impart the vividness, the rapid changes, the suspense, the skill, the picturesqueness, or horror of the actual thing. ”

“ Others, more fortunate, achieve the top
At one swift elevation, by the lift.
Mr. Geek, whatever his method of progression may have been, has certainly "achieved the top"—if indeed he has not gone over it. ”

“ 'Tis a common proof,
That lowliness is young ambition's ladder,
Whereto the climber upward turns his face;
But when he once attains the upmost round,
He then unto the ladder turns his back,
Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees
By which he did ascend. ”

“ We are all at the bottom, I think, better than our actions paint us, better than our limited points of view permit us to be, and in our illuminated moments we catch a glimpse of that Jacob's ladder that Francis Thompson saw, with ascending angels, at Charing Cross. ”