"In that early childish day I was never tired to play Games that children everyone Love until twelve years are done. To dam up a rivulet With a tile, or else to let A small saucer for a boat Down the purling gutter float: Over two bricks at a will To erect a water mill. "In those days for dice and chess Cared we busy children less Than mud-pies and buns to make, And heedfully in oven bake. Of four bricks; and when came Lent Out was brought a complement Of river shells from secret hold, Estimated above gold, To play away as I thought meet With the children of our street." "The children of our street" has a delightfully familiar ring. He also names many familiar games, such as playing ball, ring, prisoner's base, riddles, and blowing soap-bubbles. Top-spinning was an ancient game, even in Froissart's day, having been played in old Rome and the Orient since time immemorial. It is interesting to note the persistent survival of games which are seldom learned from printed rules, but are simply told from child to child from year to year. On the sidewalk, in front of my house, is now marked out with chalk the lines for a game of hop-scotch and a group of children are playing it, precisely as I played it in my New England home in my childhood, and as my grandfathers and grandmothers played "Scotch-hoppers" in their day. In a little century-old picture book, called _Youthful Recreations_, Scotch-hoppers is named and vaguely explained, and a note says:-- "This exercise was frequently practiced by the Greeks and Spartan women. Might it not be useful in the present day to prevent children having chilblains?" Now isn't that stupid? Every one knows hop-scotch time is not in the winter when the ground is rough and frozen or wet with snow and when chilblains are rife. It is a game for the hard, solid earth, or a sunny pavement.