Playbill

“ Marks ever said anything further to you girls about Bob Buckham's strawberries?" asked her boy friend.
"No. But you see, we haven't played any more outside games, either. And I know they'll give The Carnation Countess this winter and we won't any of us be allowed to play in it."
"I'm going to be a bee," announced Dot, seriously, "if they have the play. I'll have wings and a buzzer."
"A buzzer?" demanded Tess. "What's that?"
"Well, bees buzz, don't they? If they make bees out of us, as teacher says they will, we'll have to buzz, won't we? We're learning a buzzing song now." ”

“ In this division I group together such plays as lend a special character to the movement of the object, including them all, however, in the general class of throwing play, since it would unnecessarily complicate matters to make a separate class of them. In all plays with rolling balls, such as tenpins and billiards, pleasure in motion as such forms the undercurrent of the satisfaction afforded, even when they develop into important contests. The thundering roll and crash of the heavy wooden ball, and the noiseless, lightning-quick motion of the elastic ivory one, each has its charm. ”

“ A game of skill popular with girls consists in throwing the ball, and before it has time to descend taking another ball from a table, then catching the first one with the same hand.270 In bilboquet, which was played by Henry III of France, and is known to many primitive peoples, as, for instance the Eskimos, the ball is caught in a cup, to which it is attached by a string. The games are much more varied when two or more play together at throwing and catching, though in that case experimentation is usually transformed into a contest. ”

“ I would rather buy something that you are growing up to.”
“I don’t know what you mean by that,” said Lucy.
“Why, once there was a boy about three years old. He had never had any playthings bought for him, because his father had no money to spare. But one day his uncle came to visit him, and he gave him a shilling to go and buy himself a plaything with. So he went to the toy-shop, and they showed him a whistle and a ball. Now, he was not quite old enough to play with a ball, though it was almost time for him to be too old to be amused much with a whistle. ”

“ The players of each side play alternately—a white and a color—and the luck constantly changes; for as, at the close of the game, all balls of one side count which are nearer to the black than any ball of the other side, a lucky roll may change the whole result by coming in closer, or by knocking away either black, white, or colored balls.
Great skill can be used, as, if the ball is too swift, it goes beyond all the balls unless it hits and scatters them; if too light, it fails to come in near the black. ”

“ Oh! how many jolly games I have had in the capital playground of Dewberry Grammar School with my owner, Ben Baily, and his chum, Bill Smith. The marbles I won for him, helped by his own good play, for he was a first-rate player, made quite a goodly store in his play-box. Many a boy who had been so lucky, and who played so well, would have sold them secretly to old Spattleberry, as indeed I have known some mean boys do. ”

“ While there are various objects employed in such play—as, for instance, in the Greek πενταλιθίζειν there were five pebbles, bits of china, or what we call jack-stones, thrown up with one hand and caught on its back, and in the beautiful game of magic rings, and trials of skill with sticks, knives, watches, etc.269—still the ball is the most perfect and suitable plaything, partly because it is easy to grasp from any direction and partly on account of its lightness and elasticity. It is equally well adapted to solitary or social play. ”

“ Divide the remaining balls equally among the players, or give an equal number of balls to each player. If four play, it is more interesting to form sides, the two players on one side taking the dark balls, and the other two the light ones. Blue and black are considered dark—red and yellow, light. The players, retiring to some part of the room more or less distant from the white ball, now bowl the colored balls, which they hold, at the white one, by turns. Each player bowls one ball at a time, the play passing around the company as many times as there are colored balls for each player. ”

“ No more than the sedate man, who, walking on the edge of a playground, sees a ball coming directly towards him, and seized suddenly with a boyish impulse, jumps aside and sends it whizzing back, as he had not done for twenty years, with his cane—no more than that unconscious school-boy of fourscore (thank God there are many such live coals under the ashes) thinks he shall play again at ball. ”

“ They are trials of skill between two parties, consisting of a considerable number of men, forty to sixty aside, and often between two parishes. These exercises have their name from “hurling” a wooden ball, about three inches diameter, covered with a plate of silver, which is sometimes gilt, and has commonly a motto—“Fair play is good play.” The success depends on catching the ball dexterously when thrown up, or dealt, and carrying it off expeditiously, in spite of all opposition from the adverse party ”

“ I have seen a diabolo player who was beautiful to follow, and a juggler who placed two billiard cues end to end on his forehead, threw a ball and caught it at the top of the cues, then dislodged the ball and put it into play with three others. This extraordinary mixture of good and dull things, this lack of character, makes the circus easy to like and useless to think about. ”

“ The child will hold the ball fast, the arm will rise as you lift the ball, and as you loosen the string the hand and arm will sink back from their own weight; the feeling of the utterance of force, as well as the alternation of the movement, will delight the child. From this, however, soon springs a quite new play, that is also something new to the child, when, through a suitable drawing and lifting, the ball escapes from the child’s hand and then quietly moves freely before him as an individual object. ”

“ Its disappearance is effected as follows:—At the moment when the performer encircles the ball with his hands, he gives, with the little finger of the hand which is innermost—and therefore unseen by the audience—a quick jerk to the ball, which is thereby made to roll towards the hinder edge of the table, and drop upon the servante, on which there should be a padded box or basket to receive it. The action is wholly concealed from the spectators by the hands, which, with the exception of the finger which does the work, should remain motionless. ”

“ Every year increases my conviction of the great importance of the play-ground, and of the folly of some of my early views respecting it. Finding a great variety of lessons and objects necessary to arrest the attention of children, diversified as they are in disposition and taste, it was supposed that an equal variety of toys was required for the play-ground. A good supply of balls, battledores, shuttlecocks, tops, whips, skipping-ropes, hoops, sticks, and wheelbarrows, was, therefore, obtained, and we flattered ourselves that this must produce universal happiness. ”

“ The experienced one has learned that usually, when all is not well with him at billiards, the fault is with himself or in his stroke. A less skillful performer will blame the balls when a sagging floor has thrown the table out of level, the table when a ball needs either truing or a holiday, the chalk or the leather when he is wildly throwing his whole body at the ball, and the cushion when diminished speed is really due to the influence of a protracted spell of damp weather upon cloth or ivory. ”

“ Nothing is too profound, nothing too subtle to be evolved from a game or a toy. We are gravely told that "the doll with its immense educational power should be carefully introduced into the schools," that "Pussy-in-the-Corner" is "an Ariadne clew to the labyrinth of experience," and that a ball, tossed to the accompaniment of a song insultingly banal, will enable a child "to hold fast one high purpose amid all the vicissitudes of time and place." ”

“ The “orange-girls” have gone out, and staid married women, who pay a weekly stipend to the box-lobby fruit-woman, now vend play-bills in the theatre, but derive most of their emolument from the sale of the “book of the play,” or “the songs” of the evening. The old cry about the streets, “Choice fruit, and a bill of the play—Drury-lane or Covent-garden,” is almost extinct; the barrow-women are obliged to obtain special permission to remain opposite some friendly shopkeeper’s door; and the play-bills are chiefly hawked by little beggarly boys. ”

“ While it may not be any more wrong to hit a ball from the end of a stick—as in billiards—than it is to hit it from a mallet in croquet; or from a stretched tendon, as in tennis; or from a bat, as in baseball—we do not feel that we have to argue the point, when we remind the reader that billiards and pool, especially in the public parlors, do assemble questionable companions, who use questionable language; while these games are often accompanied by betting, which is always to be deplored. ”

“ Ball-play Dance, Choctaw.—Men and women dance around their respective stakes, at intervals, during the night preceding the play—four conjurors sit all night and smoke to the Great Spirit, at the point where the ball is to be started—and stakeholders guard the goods staked.
428. Ball-play of the Choctaws—ball up—one party painted white; each has two sticks with a web at their ends, in which they catch the ball and throw it—they all have tails of horse-hair or quills attached to their girdles or belts. ”

“ The necessary accessories are a red, a black, and a white billiard ball, all solid. Place the white ball in the profonde, and the black one in the pochette, on the left side. Having arrived at the point in Annihilation (p. 100) where all the balls have been disposed of with the exception of the last solid one, you throw this in the air as if to vanish it in that direction. While all eyes follow the ball in its upward flight you lower the left hand and take the white ball from the profonde, palming it. In doing this you would of course stand with the right side to the audience. ”

“ She whom nature has endowed with a comely figure, adopts the 'decolado,' or low-necked, short-sleeved fashion, while her less favoured sisters prefer to conceal their charms behind spotted lace or tulle. In short, the frequenters of such a ball as that to which I refer are licensed to dress as becomingly as they please, and only on rare occasions, such as a ball at the theatre, at the governor's house, or at the mansion of some equally distinguished person, are the strict rules of French etiquette observed. ”

“ The Old Women give a shrill cry, and instantly there are seen coming down the ladder the same three musicians who played at the Man's ball. The fiddler folds a handkerchief on his shoulder, to form a pad for his fiddle, and they begin to play with extraordinary energy. ”

“ These appear at first fitfully—the young, who are not good enough for the serious business of the day, and the old, who are losing their game, meeting together, followed later by the regular habitués, who play billiards or pool as may be. Conversation is carried on as if the marker were both deaf and dumb, a mere machine for returning the ball and handing the rest. ”

“ The position which the object-ball may assume after being struck is unimportant, so far as that particular stroke is concerned; but in the management of the balls and the ability to leave them in a position favorable to the next play—or unfavorable to his opponent, if the player thinks it impossible to count himself—lies the strength and science of the game.
41 General Division of the Object-Balls. The spots on the horizontal line through the centre diameter of the ball, are the different fractional parts at which the cue-ball may be delivered, to effect certain results. ”

“ We-chúsh-ta-dóo-ta, the Red Man; the two most distinguished ball-players of the Sioux tribe, in their ball-play dress, with their ball-sticks in their hands.
In this beautiful and favourite game, each player is adorned with an embroidered belt, and a tail of beautiful quills or horse-hair; the arms, legs, and feet are always naked, and curiously painted. (See two paintings of ball-plays, and further description of the game, under Amusements, Nos. 428, 429, 430, and the ball-sticks among the manufactures.) ”

“ The players in the center dodge the ball, which, while in play, is thrown by any of those forming the circle. Those who are hit with the ball take their places among those around the circle, and have an equal chance at those remaining in the center. One is put out at a time. ”

“ With this dainty colored plaything we begin our first bit of education,—not instruction, mere pouring in, but true education, drawing out, developing. The balls should be kept in a pretty basket, as the beautiful should be cultivated in every way in the true kindergarten; and when they are given to the class, it should be with some little song sung by the kindergartner or one of the older children. At the close of the lesson, as the basket is passed, each child may gently drop his ball into it, saying simply, "Thank you for my ball," or naming its color. ”