In our last division of this class of games the projectile must cling
to the target. Everybody has tried to throw his cap on his head or
a peg, and jugglers and clowns give us numberless examples of feats
belonging here. One game is played with rings hung on a stick, or
caught with a hook, or thrown on an upright stake. At fairs the lucky
player gets a prize for tossing rings on knives. Play of this kind has
been used by a brilliant American journal to point a satire on American
bidding for European titles. The ambitious damsels stand in front of
a brightly lighted booth, in which numerous manikins of repulsive
appearance, with their armorial bearings suspended round their necks,
are ranged on exhibition, and attempt to throw engagement rings over
the heads of these figures.
6. _Catching_
Catching and holding moving objects is the direct opposite of throwing,
and the two are best understood by being contrasted. Catching, too, is
the complement of throwing; the object which has been set in motion,
animated, as it were, by human power, comes to our hand to get new
life. In no way can our supremacy over matter find more satisfactory
expression. It is with difficulty that children learn to catch, for the
direction of their necessary motions by means of sight requires so much
time that the moving object passes to another place before the hand is
ready to seize it. The child usually practises catching a ball rolling
on the floor first, then holds up its dress or apron or two hands
placed together to form a cup into which the ball thrown skilfully
through the air will drop. Many such attempts are required before the
art is acquired of controlling the muscular innervation to meet the
still distant moving object.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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