The Dutch were no haters of games as were the Puritans; games were known and played even in the time of the first settlers. Steven Janse had a _tick-tack bort_ at Fort Orange. Tick-tack was a complicated kind of backgammon, played with both men and pegs. “The Compleat Gamester” says tick-tack is so called from touch and take, for if you touch a man you must play him though to your loss. “Tick-tacking” was prohibited during time of divine service in New Amsterdam in 1656. Another Dutch tapster had a trock-table, which Florio says was “a kind of game used in England with casting little bowles at a boord with thirteen holes in it.” A trock-table was a table much like a pool table, on which an ivory ball was struck under a wire wicket by a cue. Trock was also played on the grass,--a seventeenth-century modification of croquet. Of bowling we hear plenty of talk; it was universally played, from clergy down to negro slaves, and a famous street in New York, the Bowling Green, perpetuates its popularity. The English brought card-playing and gaming, to which the Dutch never abandoned themselves. By the middle of the eighteenth century we find more amusements and a gayer life. The first regularly banded company of comedians which played in New York strayed thence from Philadelphia in March, 1750, where they had been bound over to good behavior, and where their departure had given much joy to a disgusted Quaker community. It was called Murray and Kean’s company, and sprung up in Philadelphia like a toadstool in a night, from whence or how no one knows. The comedians announced their “sitting down” in New York for the season. They opened with King Richard III., “written by Shakespeare and improved by Colley Cibber.” They also played “The Beau in the Sudds,” “The Spanish Fryer,” “The Orphan,” “The Beau’s Stratagem,” “The Constant Couple,” “The Lying Valet,” “The Twin Rivals,” “Colin and Phœbe,” “Love for Love,” “The Stagecoach,” “The Recruiting Officer,” “Cato,” “Amphitryon,” “Sir Harry Wildair,” “George Barnwell,” “Bold Stroke for a Wife,” “Beggar’s Opera,” “The Mock Doctor,” “The Devil to Pay,” “The Fair Penitent,” “The Virgin Unmasked,” “Miss in her Teens,” and a variety of pantomimes and farces. This was really a very good series of bills, but the actors were a sorry lot. One was a redemptioner, Mrs. Davis, and she had a benefit to help to buy her freedom; another desired a benefit, as he was “just out of prison.” They were in town ten months, and seem to have been on very friendly terms with the public, borrowing single copies of plays to study from, having constant benefits, ending with one for Mr. Kean, in which one Mrs. Taylor was “out so much in her part” that she had to be apologized for afterwards in the newspapers. She had a benefit shortly after, at which, naturally and properly, there “wasn’t much company.” Miss George at her benefit had bad weather and other disappointments, and tried it over again. At last Mr. Kean,