MARBLES: WHERE MADE; TERMS OF THE GAMES; DIFFERENT GAMES; HOW TO
ACQUIRE SKILL


Each season has its own particular work for the farmer, and he does
his work without direction from or consultation with his neighbors or
any one else. Each season has its own particular games for the young
folks, and they take to them without any suggestion from outsiders,
just as young ducks take to water, without any instructions from the
mother bird. The seasons in the south temperate zone are just the
opposite to those in the north. Some years ago I spent the months of
July and August in New Zealand, and great was my surprise to find the
boys down at Dunedin snowballing on the Fourth of July, while the
sleigh-bells made music through the streets. In the following October,
which is the spring month in Victoria, Australia, I found the
youngsters of Melbourne playing marbles, just as the boys in New York
had been doing when I left it the previous May.

MARBLES

We have reason to believe that the first marbles were fashioned from
pebbles on the ocean's shore, or ground into roundness by the action
of river currents. We do not know when or where marbles originated,
but of the antiquity of the game we are very sure. Egyptian boys
played marbles before the days of Moses, and marbles are among the
treasures found buried in the ruins of Pompeii, which you will
remember was destroyed by an eruption of lava from Vesuvius in the
first century of the Christian era. To-day marbles are played in every
civilized land under the sun, and with slight differences, the method