"The little ones unbutton'd, glowing hot
Playing our games and on the very spot
As happy as we once, to kneel and draw
The chalky ring, and knuckle down at taw."
The terms used were the same as those heard to-day in school yards: taws, vent, back-licks, rounces, dubs, alleys, and alley-taws, agates, bull's-eyes, and commoneys. Jackstones was an old English game known in Locke's day as dibstones. Other names for the game were chuckstones, chuckie-stones, and clinches. The game is precisely the same as was played two centuries ago; it was a girl's game then—it is a girl's game now.
Battledores and Shuttles were advertised for sale in Boston in 1761; but they are far older than that. Many portraits of children show battledores, as that of Thomas Aston Coffin. All books of children's games speak of them. It was, in fact, a popular game, and deemed a properly elegant exercise for decorous young misses to indulge in.
CHAPTER XIX
FLOWER LORE OF CHILDREN
In childhood when with eager eyes
The season-measured years I view'd
All, garb'd in fairy guise
Pledg'd constancy of good.
Spring sang of heaven; the summer flowers
Bade me gaze on, and did not fade;
Even suns o'er autumn's bowers
Heard my strong wish, and stay'd.
They came and went, the short-lived four,
Yet, as their varying dance they wove,
To my young heart each bore
Its own sure claim of love.