Baste, or buffet the bear with hammer and block, are rather appendages to other games than games by themselves, being punishments for failures, that ought to have been avoided; the first is nothing more than a boy couching down, who is laden with the clothes of his comrades and then buffeted by them; the latter takes place when two boys have offended, one of which kneeling down bends his body towards the ground, and he is called the block; the other is named the hammer, and taken up by four of his comrades, one at each arm and one at each leg, and struck against the block as many times as the play requires.
Hunt the Slipper.—In this pastime a number of boys and girls indiscriminately sit down upon the ground in a ring, with one of their companions standing on the outside; a slipper is then produced by those seated in the ring, and passed about from one to the other underneath their clothes as briskly as possible, so as to prevent the player without from knowing where it is; when he can find it, and detain it, the person in whose possession it was, at that time, must change place with him, and the play recommences.
Shuttle-cock has been spoken of in a former chapter, the engraving, No. 98, [1125] affords an ancient representation of the game.
IX.—SPORTING WITH INSECTS—KITES—WINDMILLS.
Spinning of chafers and of butterflies.—I do not know a greater fault in the nurture of children than the conniving at the wanton acts of barbarity which they practise at an early age upon innocent insects; the judgment of that parent must be exceedingly defective, or strangely perverted, who can proportion the degree of cruelty to the smallness of the creature that unfortunately becomes the sufferer. It is but a fly, perhaps he may say, when he sees his child pluck off its wings or its legs by way of amusement; it is but a fly, and cannot feel much pain; besides the infant would cry if I was to take it from him, and that might endanger his health, which surely is of more consequence than many flies: but I fear worse consequences are to be dreaded by permitting it to indulge so vicious an inclination, for as it grows up, the same cruelty will in all likelihood be extended to larger animals, and its heart by degrees made callous to every claim of tenderness and humanity.
I have seen school-boys shooting of flies with a headless pin impelled through part of a tobacco-pipe, by the means of a bent cane, and this instrument is commonly called a fly-gun; from this they have proceeded to the truncating of frogs, and afterwards to tormenting of cats, with every other kind of animal they dare to attack; but I have neither time to recollect, nor inclination to relate, the various wanton acts of barbarism that have been practised, arising from the want of checking this pernicious inclination as soon as it begins to manifest in the minds of children.
The chafers, or May-flies, a kind of beetles found upon the bloom of hemlock in the months of May and June, are generally made the victims of youthful cruelty. These inoffensive insects are frequently caught in great quantities, crammed into small boxes without food, and carried in the pockets of school-boys to be taken out and tormented at their leisure, which is done in this manner; a crooked pin having two or three yards of thread attached to it, is thrust through the tail of the chafer, and on its being thrown into the air it naturally endeavours to fly away, but is readily drawn back by the boy, which occasions it to redouble its efforts to escape; these struggles are called spinning, and the more it makes of them, and the quicker the vibrations are, the more its young tormentor is delighted with his prize.
I am convinced that this cruelty, as well as many others above mentioned, arise from the perpetrators not being well aware of the consequences, nor conscious that the practice of them is exceedingly wicked. I hope the reader will excuse my introducing a story relating to myself; but as it may serve to elucidate the argument, I shall venture to give it. When a child, I was caught by my mother, who greatly abhorred every species of cruelty, in the act of spinning a chafer; I was so much delighted with the performance that I did not observe her coming into the room, but when she saw what I was about, without saying any thing previously to me, she caught me by the ear and pinched it so severely that I cried for mercy; to the punishment she added this just reproof: "That insect has its feelings as you have! do you not see that the swift vibrations of its wings are occasioned by the torment it sustains? you have pierced its body without remorse, I have only pinched your ear, and yet you have cried out as if I had killed you." I felt the admonition in its full effect, liberated the poor May-fly, and never impaled another afterwards.
