They also play BODY-BUILDING of different kinds, and one of the most complicated of these chalk-games is now called GERMANS-ENGLISH. It begins with a design shaped rather like a coffin with fields of squares in the middle and a field of them running along each side, and a field for “lost” at the top and another field at the bottom which I don’t remember the use of, and two starting-points at each end of the bottom. Only two boys can play; they throw their nickers by turns into the middle fields, and if they land on a line it counts nothing, but whoever lands in a field can begin building a soldier in the corresponding side-field; first his head; then (for another throw into the right field) his body; then (for another) his legs; then his rifle; then a bullet at the end of his rifle. Once the bullet is there, that soldier stands for good. But while he is still being built, the other boy, if he throws well, can set up another soldier in the corresponding side-field in shorter time, and once that soldier has his bullet--why, he can shoot the other fellow opposite, if he’s not complete, and finish him off for good. So there are all the time soldiers building in the different side-fields on both sides, each growing up as fast as he can, and all shooting each other whenever they get the chance; and the winner is the boy who has most soldiers alive at the end. And you can see from this that it’s a complicated business and shows what youngsters can think out with a bit of chalk (if somebody didn’t think it out for them); but to explain it properly would require at least twenty diagrams to show the game in its different stages, and I can’t draw diagrams--never could; which is a pity. The small children have a chalk-game all to themselves called POLLY POLLY WHAT’S THE TIME, where they draw a sort of clock on the pavement and cover up parts of it with their jackets or anything else. The girls have another, BOOTS, SHOES, TIPS, OR NAILS, in which one of them draws a square on the pavement containing room for the four letters b. t. s. or n.; she writes one of them down and then covers it up; the others must guess which letter it is, and they score up how many correct guesses each one has had. Boys sometimes play this, but not often. And then the well-known CHALK-CHASE. There are different kinds of CHALK-CHASE, such as CONVICTS AND WARDERS (or TRACKING THE CONVICTS) and SCOUTS; but the real old CHALK-CHASE, as played by my friends of the “Char-charcoal-chalk-chase-club”, goes like this:-- “You pick parteis and then they clip for First outing. Each player has a peice of chalk which he has to draw arroes the hounds follow & they must cross out the arroes until the Others are caught then its the Others turn”. Played it yourself, maybe?