I must tell you about DATE-HOGS. It’s played by small children with date-stones and screws—the stones you find, the screws you pinch or mump; and each boy has a certain number of throws with his date-stones at one of the other chap’s screws standing up on end. Now it’s quite clear that, getting the screws the way they do, they sometimes get big ones, and sometimes little ones, and have to be jolly glad to get any at all; and it’s also clear that, big screws being easier to hit than little ones, the game would be unfair if you always threw from the same distance. Therefore you mustn’t always throw from the same distance. But how are you to settle it fairly? Well, everybody knows that big screws have more turns or twists in them than little screws have. So they measure the throwing-distance by the number of these turns. A small screw, which is hard to hit, has (say) five turns, so you have to stand five paces off; a big screw, which is easier to hit, has (say) ten turns, and so you stand ten paces off; and this makes the chances always even. Shows how artful these kids are—
and FOX AND HOUNDS (HARE AND HOUNDS) and BATTLE OF WATERLOO and LAMP AWAY and STICKJAW and PAPER TRUNCHEONS and POTATOE-SHOOTERS and FUEL FOR THE FIRE and TIME GUESSING and ROUND THE BLOCK and HUMBLE-BUMBLE and GO YOUR WAY and A PIN TO LOOK AT THE POPPY-SHOW—
A poppy-show—that’s a puppet-show, if the boys hadn’t forgotten what a puppet-show was. You need rather a fresh boy for this game, and when you’ve found him, you get hold of a big book—a Bible, if possible, because it has so many pages and looks respectable anyhow, but chiefly on account of the pages—and anywhere between its pages you put a few transfers; just a few. You hold the book in your hand with the back downwards and press the covers together as tightly as ever you can, and come up to your lad and say “A pin to look at the poppy-show.” Then he, with a pin, has to dab down between the closed pages of the book, and if he strikes a place where a transfer happens to be, of course it’s his; otherwise, you keep his pin. You can guess his chances, when there are about three transfers hidden among four hundred pages. If he likes to be a fool, he can get rid of all his pins that way, while you keep your poppy-show for the next fresh boy you come across—
and LAST ACROSS and STEPS ACROSS and PEEP (also called JACK) and HOME FOUR and I SPY EGGS AND BACON (hide-and-seek) and SAVOY (also called SAVELOY) and WATERMAN and LEADING THE BLIND HORSE TO THE KNACKER and FAIRY CHASE and HOPPING JINNY and SKITTLES KNOCK ’EM DOWN and GUESSING WORDS (at shop-windows) and NICKO MIDNIGHT (“Flash your light”) and Pig in the pot—
“One person stands in the middle all the rest stand at one end the whole lot have to run to the other side. If you start you must keep on. If one or two are caught you have to join hands and go after the others.”
and FIGHT FOR THE FLAG (two parties: played from a mound) and LEARN YOUR A. B. C. and SERVING YOUR COUNTRY A GOOD GAME and LIG-A-LOG and FRENCH BLIND MAN’S BUFF and ANIMAL BLIND MAN’S BUFF—
“A ring is drawn, in which is a blind man, and the players; the players move about until the blind man strikes on the ground with his wand. He then touches any one (all are standing still) and asks them to imitate an animal’s voice. He then tries to recognise them by their voice. If he succeeds the other is the blind man, if not, the game is continued”—
and WILL YOU SURRENDER and TELLING YOUR DREAM and FIVE TEN FIFTEEN TWENTY (catch-game) and JACK AROUND (catch) and SEE YOU ACROSS and LONG RUN and RACE TO BERLIN (new) and BOGIE MAN (catch) and NO MAN STANDING and WALL TO WALL and SAINT GEORGE AND HIS MERRY MEN and DELIVER YOUR LUGGAGE and FISH AWAY JACK (four lamp-posts and eight boys) and PIN, BUTTON OR MARBLE—
In this, you go up to a boy smaller than yourself and take him by the throat and say “Pin, button, or marble”. And that’s all you have to do. Because then he must turn out his pockets and give you whatever he can find, and thank God if he doesn’t get a thrashing into the bargain. It isn’t exactly what you’ld call even chances, but it’s quite all right, especially if you happen to be the big boy; because the big boy generally wins at this game. Now you may wonder why they collect pins. Well, our boys will collect anything, anyhow, anywhere—even if it’s useless; but precious few things, you know, are really useless (I can’t think of a single one, just now), and as to pins—I’m not even going to try to tell you in how many ways you need them. Some boys go about with a provision of hundreds of pins stuck in their clothes for different sports; mothers are also very fond of pins, and if you give them a nice handful on a Saturday morning, they’ll think you’ve been quietly thinking about them all the week and collecting pins for them; and maybe that’ll mean an extra something for the picture-show later on. They collect buttons the same way, for games like BUTTONS IN THE RING; only the buttons must be of metal, of brass or steel; they must ring like money when you throw them on the pavement: that’s the test. All other buttons are simply “toot”—not worth talking about. The best metal buttons are commissionaires’ buttons; they’re called “raileys”, and a good railey is worth four or even six ordinary metal ones, while a bad one (with a loose shank, for instance) will fetch only two. Many boys are able to stitch themselves full of these buttons, for use in games; the less clever ones, those who keep on losing them, have to cut the buttons from their own clothes and go about from one year’s end to another with their trowsers hitched to their braces by means of their sisters’ hair-pins, bent double. But that’s neither here nor there—
and SINGLE SAY-GO and DOUBLE SAY-GO and QUEEN, KING OR DIRTY RASCAL and MOSCOW and RUGBY SCRUM (introduced by the scouts) and I WILL APPRENTICE MY SON TO A CARPENTER and SAILOR BOY and STORKY and EGGS and THREE IN THREE OUT (the last four are hide-and-seek games) and CROWNINGS (also hide-and-seek) and MOUSE IN THE COPPER and SHOW THREE FACES: GO and MAGIC WRITING and DRAG-LAG (played with sacks) and PICKLE CABBAGE (name-calling) and PUTTING (not pulling) THE KAISER’S WHISKERS (new) and BLUE BOY and BACK YOU and KING CAESAR and TING TING THE SPIDER (you need an outside window for this) and PUSS IN THE CORNER and HOP AND CHARGE and TAKING THE CASTLE and DARTS (also called NIBS) and PENNY THREE HALFPENCE TWOPENCE (running) and TWO IN TWO OUT and TUG OF WAR and CHIVY CHASE and DADDY RED-CAP (or GREEN-CAP)—and that’s enough for today.