Lawn Hab-enihan.
Mark with a whitewash brush upon the grass, scratch with a stick upon the bare ground or hard sand of a shore, twelve concentric circles. Number the rings from the outside to the centre.
Supply each player with a dozen smooth stones, about the size of the palm of one’s hand. If you can get flat, water-washed stones, with rounded edges, they make the best “Habs.” Standing upon the taw-line at the distance from the target agreed upon, each player in turn pitches a hab at the target, or “Enihan,” leaving a stone inside the circle struck. But if his hab rests upon a line which bounds the rings he loses his turn after the first shot. The player may remove a hab from the circle last struck, or set another hab in it, or, counting from where any one of his habs rests, can move that hab as many circles toward the centre as corresponds with the number of the circle last struck.
If this moves the hab to the centre and leaves some figures over he can place a new hab forward as many rings as correspond with the numbers left over. If any player can cast two habs into a circle occupied by some other player’s hab, the successful player captures the other hab and removes it. The game consists of any specified number of points, and when any one of the players has no habs on the enihan the game is ended. Then each player counts the number of his habs in the centre and the number of captured habs, and whoever has the most adds to his or her individual score the number of habs left on the enihan. The players have three objects constantly in view: to protect his or her habs from capture by getting more than one in the same circle, to work to the centre, and to capture the opponent’s habs. This is an exciting outdoor game, which may be played with the material at hand, and when two players have each a hab in the same circle, and each hab is moving nearer and nearer the centre, the danger of a lucky shot and capture keeps them “guessing.”
CHAPTER XI.
HOW TO BUILD AND HOW TO FURNISH A DANIEL BOONE CABIN.
Imagination is a great thing and can do wonders; it can surround the most commonplace objects with an atmosphere of romance, in which nothing is impossible or improbable. A whiff of smoke from the fireplace where wood is burning, means nothing but a faulty chimney; yet, as the smell of burning wood reaches the nostrils, Association sets the wheels of