A record of old-time sports would be incomplete without reference to the laws of sport times. These are as firmly established as the seasons, and as regular as the blooming of flowers. Children cannot explain them, nor is there any leader who establishes them. It is not a matter of reason; it is instinct. A Swiss writer says that boys' games there belong chiefly to the first third of the year, always return in the same order, and "without the individual child being able to say who had given the sign, and made the beginning." From Maine to Georgia the first time is, has been (and we may almost add "ever shall be world without end"), marble time. Then come tops. The saying is, "Top time's gone, kite time's come, April Fool's Day will soon be here." Ball-playing in Boston had as its time the first Thursday in April. Whistle-making would naturally come at a time when whistle wood was in good condition. All the boys in all the towns perch on stilts as closely in unison as the reports of a Gatling gun. There is much sentiment in the thought that for years, almost for centuries, thousands of boys in every community have had the same games at the same time, and the recital almost reaches the dignity of history. CHAPTER XVIII CHILDREN'S TOYS _Behold the child, by nature's kindly law Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw. Some livelier plaything gives his youth delight, A little louder but as empty quite._ --_Essay on Man. Alexander Pope, 1732._ In the year 1695 Mr. Higginson wrote from Massachusetts to his brother in England, that if toys were imported in small quantity to America they would sell. In very small quantity, we fancy, though the influence of crown and court began to be felt in New England, and many articles of luxury were exported to that colony as they were to Virginia. According to our present ideas, playthings for children in colonial time were few in number, save the various ones they manufactured for themselves. They played more games, and had fewer toys than modern children. In 1712, on the list of rich goods brought into Boston by a privateersman and sold there, were "Boxes of Toys." In 1743 the _Boston News Letter_ advertised "Dutch and English Toys for Children," and Mr. Ernst says Boston had a flourishing toy shop at that date. Other towns did not, as we know from many shipping orders. [Illustration: An Old Doll] _The Toy Shop or Sentimental Preceptor_, one of Newbery's books, gives a list of toys which the young English scholar sought; they are a looking-glass, a "spying glass," a "fluffed dog," a pocket-book, a mask, a drum, a doll, a watch, a pair of scales. Few of these articles named would really be termed toys. Some of the games already alluded to, such as top-spinning, hoop-rolling, and the various games of ball, required toys to carry them on; but they seemed to fall into classification more naturally in the chapter on games than in this one. [Illustration: An Old Doll]