completed by one act the total defeat of its luckless commander. “Your marble is left in the ring!” exclaimed Tom, with a shout of triumph. “I see how it happened,” said Mr. Seymour; “the vicar struck the marble plump, or ‘played a full ball,’ as we say at billiards, and the result easily admits of explanation. You already know that a marble possesses elasticity; when, therefore, the one in the ring was struck, it went off with a velocity equal to that with which the striking marble approached it, while the latter, in return, received a blow equal to that it gave, which destroyed its motion. When we go back into the library, I will exhibit a very pretty experiment in farther elucidation of this philosophical truth.”(26) It was now Mr. Seymour’s turn to enter the lists. He carefully applied his knuckles to the ground, and taking aim at a little marble which he had selected as his victim, gallantly shot the missile from his thumb and finger; but, alas! alas! the goddess, whatever may be her name, who presides over this species of tournay, doubtless saw the impending fate of her favourite, and, after the example of Venus, who turned aside the weapon from Æneas, assumed the shape of a small pebble, and thus arrested the fatal course of the marble, and gave it a new direction, which sent it curveting through the ring, without committing one single act of devastation. “Bravo! bravo!” exclaimed Tom, “it is now my turn.” The boy, according to the usage of the field, might at once have won the game by striking his father’s marble; but he was too magnanimous to take such an advantage, and too eager to display his own skill, to cut the game short by a manœuvre: he had determined to win his laurels by hard fighting and generalship. He accordingly proceeded to strike a ring marble; in effecting which he had, like the vicar, challenged a _gigantic knight_ as his antagonist; but, instead of striking it _plump_, he struck its upper quarter, so that it was rolled out of the ring, while the striking marble, imparting only a portion of its momentum, continued to move forward after the impact. This course was greeted with the acclamations of Mr. Seymour and the vicar, the latter of whom declared it to have been “nobly run,” and gallantly accomplished; and extracting a sixpence from his waistcoat pocket, exclaimed, after the manner of chivalry, “_Largesse, largesse_, glory to the sons of the brave! glory to the invincible knight of the taw!” The boy had not only struck the marble out of the ring, but he had, at the same time, contrived to place his own marble in the most favourable position for his future operations; and, indeed, it may be here observed, that in this consists the art of playing the game. It is almost unnecessary to add that Tom won every marble in succession.