There’s this to be said for picture-games: they make the boys uncommonly nimble with their hands and fingers, and this must help them later on, if they go in for certain trades like watch-making. In fact, they require real skill; as I found out the other day when they asked me to play BANKER (just for a lark, they said) and got five coppers out of me in about half as many minutes. No, I’ve nothing against picture-games except that their names are not as good as those of the duty sports and that they don’t give the youngsters any chance of running about and using their legs. And also this: they’re really horrible inducements to gambling--especially BANKER. Now I don’t like even talking about gambling, because it’s forbidden by law, and everybody knows it. And yet, only yesterday I noticed a lot of them at it; evidently at it. I could see they were up to mischief, by the way they cleared. Dam funny it was--how they just melted into nothing, before I could get a proper sight of them. Not our boys, I’m glad to say. They’re so keen on these picture-games that you can see them playing at half-past six in the morning and after nine at night; and in the rain, too; and when they have no fag-pictures they try to play the same games with bus tickets and then, if you’re not very careful, you can hear some shocking bad swear-words which they pick up I can’t think where, because the bus tickets bend too easily and won’t fly as they should. And that reminds me of some other games of the smaller children--those played with five stones (boys) or gobs and bonsers (girls). Gobs (cobs) are shaped like dice, or ought to be; and a bonser or bonk or buck or bonster is a large marble that bounces from the ground (bouncer), about the size of a forty-eighter. You can buy four gobs and a bonk for a half-penny; you can also make them yourself--the gobs or stones, I mean--out of bits of porcellain and pebbles and winkle-shells; but the bought ones are the best, because, for one reason, you have to pay for them. With these things you play BUCK AND FOUR of different kinds, such as TELLINGS and SISTERS and STAND UP JACK. For BASKETS you need a diagram on the pavement, which I can’t draw. Other games of this sort are ALLEY GOBS and CHANGES and PICKSES and STANDSES-- “In standses aim the marble up then as the marble is coming down stand one of the stones up till you stand all the four up then you drop them again--” and SHUFFLES and FULL-STOP AND COMMA and FLY DOBS and BABES IN THE WELL and ONE STAND UP ONES’ES-- “if one gob stands up when thrown out, the process of ones’es must be taken. After this you must get two to stand up [on their sides, of course], then three and so in the right order”-- and OVER THE WALL ONE TWO THREE and SPANS and LONDON BRIDGE--