Few, if any, modern archers in long shooting reach four hundred yards, or in shooting at a mark exceed eighty or a hundred. But archery has been since the invention of gunpowder only followed for pastime. It is decidedly the most graceful game which can be practiced, and the legends of Sherwood Forest, of Robin Hood, Maid Marian, Little John, Friar Tuck, and the Abbot carry us into the fragrant heart of the forest, and bring back memories which are agreeable to all people who have in them a drop of Saxon blood.
[XVIII.]
AMUSEMENTS FOR THE MIDDLE-AGED AND THE AGED.
We can not but notice, as people go on in life—when, as Lord Mansfield said, “The absence of pain is pleasure, just as in youth the absence of pleasure is pain”—that the quiet corner by the fire, or the seat at the library-table with the shaded lamp, and a quiet game or two when reading has fatigued the eyes, becomes almost necessary.
Of all the means of cheating a succession of dull evenings of their tedium, perhaps that little invention called a “Solitaire” board—which is simply a board pierced with thirty-seven holes, which are nearly filled with thirty-six pegs—has proved itself the most eminently successful. It was invented, it is said, by a French Jesuit, in Canada, to help him through the long Canadian winter evenings, and it has proved to be a boon to mankind.
One peg takes another when it can leap over into an empty hole. To get all off but one peg is nearly impossible, but it can be done.
Then comes “Merelles,” or “Nine Men’s Morris,” which can be played on a board, or on the ground, but which finds itself reduced even to a parlor game. This, however, takes two players.
“American Bagatelle,” which can be played alone, or with an antagonist; Chinese puzzles, which are infinitely amusing; and all the great family of the sphinx known as puzzles—are of infinite service to the retired, quiet, lonely people for whom the active business of life is at an end. The guessing of arithmetical puzzles, the solution of enigmas, and the solution of a paradox—these amuse many an evening.
We may give one of these old things as an example. It is called “The Blind Abbot and his Monks,” and is played with counters. Arrange eight external cells of a square so that there may always be nine in each row, though the whole number may vary from eighteen to thirty-six.