“MARBLES ARE OUT”
TOPS
The peg-top appears to be a modern invention, but the whip-top is of great antiquity, it having been used in remote times by the Grecian boys; it was well known at Rome in the days of Virgil, and in England as early at least as the fourteenth century, when its form was the same as it is now. Strutt, in his “Sports and Pastimes of the People of England,” relates the following amusing anecdote of Prince Henry, the eldest son of James I., which he met with in an old manuscript at the British Museum: “The first time that the prince went to the town of Stirling to meet the king, seeing a little without the gate of the town a stack of corn in proportion not unlike to a top wherewith he used to play, he said to some that were with him, ‘Lo, there is a goodly top!’ Whereupon one of them saying, ‘Why do you not play with it then?’ he answered, ‘Set you it up for me and I will play with it.’”
THE HUMMING-TOP.
These cannot easily be made, but can very easily be purchased by those who are so lucky as to have the money. They are made hollow, having at their crown a peg, round which is wound a string; this, being pulled through a kind of fork, gives motion to the top, and sets it spinning—the fork and the string being left in the spinner’s hand. In spinning the top, care should be taken to wind the string firmly and evenly on the peg; and when it is pulled out, neither too much nor too little force should be used, and a firm and steady hand should be employed, while the top should be held in a perpendicular position. The string should be drawn with a steadily increasing force, or the top will not hum properly.
