WHERE WE PLAYED MUMBLE-THE-PEG
It is with diffidence that I name a suggestion that has been very much
on my heart since retreading these streets and revisiting these early
haunts. It is to get rich, not with dollars in the purse, but deposits
in the bank of memory. No other human faculty can be more rapidly and
strongly and surely developed than an ability to keep things in mind.
Yet many people are making use of methods that impoverish recollection.
Devices are increasing for memory-saving which have the effect of memory
destroying. A faculty's development is arrested from want of use. The
memory has not grown, but the habit of putting things down with a pencil
has developed. Our schedule of work is not unfolded in the mind and
committed to memory but is committed to little slips of paper. Things
are not carried in the brain but in the pocket and are in danger of
being laid off with one's apparel. We feel dependent on the memoranda.
Our best power, that likes to be trusted, that responds to discipline,
has no growth, but wastes away instead, owing to defective nutrition,
and lack of exercise. The memory falls into a stunted and partially
disabled condition. That minister, the most widely read of any American
clergyman, sharply points out, that a capacity falling into disuse,
falls also into a dying process, and is extirpated and withdrawn. Any
capacity kept under, allowed no range or play, suppressed, is soon
stupefied and blunted. A man was endowed with a fine faculty, and has
not turned it to account, "Take, therefore, the talent from him."
_Developing a Real and Fixed Deformity_
We once had to remember our errands but parents now hand to children a
written list. Facts, stories, incidents are not stored in the intellect,
but in a cabinet. Mental equipment, then, is all gone in the event of a
fire. Instead of being thankful that the cabinet maker was preserved it
would have been better to have saved the cabinet. There is more in that
than in him.
In the intemperate man the better parts of his nature do not have fair
play. His body is disordered, his brain confused, by a succession of
trespasses. All diseases and abuses are self limited. Improvement would
come, by a delivery from his baneful habit, and by strengthening his
principles. Memory when respected, when it uses its wings and makes
nothing of time or distance is an angel power. It is full of rural
incidents and has a great deal of nature and of soul in it. The past is
not altogether dead. It must be used to enable us to understand the real
living history around us. Now look. Do you observe that every child has
a health instinct? Intuitively it seeks the open air. A child is not
fussy about the weather. Those have the best health that go out under
all skies. Take notice that a child's birthright is freedom. When
walking with his mother he seeks to unclasp his hand from hers and make
a little detour in the grass along the way. His nature revolts at
following, forever, when out for pleasure, a beaten path. Seeing real
life reflected, you do not fail to notice, that in coasting, which in
childhood could be called, The Great Joy, the girls take a prominent
part, and there is no effort by the elders to play the spy nor block the
sport. Here are boys and girls together, oblivious of sex, like a
family, in beautiful, healthful, animating sport. It is remarkable that
coasting keeps first place, seeing that it involves climbing up as well
as sliding down. The return walk, involving a change of position, an
interchange of mind, a fine spirit of comradeship, a greatly increased
intake of ozone became for a fact a cordial of incredible virtue. God
sets all little children playing for this. He lays the necessity of play
upon them, and the restless little fellows hunger and thirst for
physical activities. On a holiday the city is emptied into the country
to enjoy for a few hours the true conditions of a healthy physical
condition.
_An Increased Reverence for the Human Organization_
The bashful athlete, as if by mere chance, takes hold of the rope just
opposite to the pretty girl of the party, I mean to one of the pretty
girls of the party, whose ear he wishes to command. As the boys owned
the sleds, the spirit of gallantry greatly promoted proprietorship, in a
double runner, which was vital to the social spirit of the sport. One
that could fly was the ideal aimed at. It seemed animate. It was well
shod. A heavy load gave momentum. It was guided with rare judgment,
watched, compared with others, improved, made to look better, until its
associated owners prided themselves in it, as a thing of life and beauty
and speed, as mariners do in a ship. Some people have to go abroad to
find folks who seem eager for an excuse to get out, to even take their
meals in the open air. The European seems chafed in his own house. He
takes his supper with his family in the face of all the world, and
enjoys the publicity. He walks about to see how other families are
faring, and they do not resent it. It would not disturb him to take his
dinner on the side-walk on Broadway. So in Southern California, nobody
shuts a door. The weather, being about like our April, the barber shops
and restaurants have no heat and often a strong current of air, that the
natives would enjoy, came streaming in through wide-open doors and
windows.
_The Open-door Policy_
Book stores were not warmed at all. One morning at breakfast I rose and
put on my overcoat, and a visitor at the next table, at the conclusion
of the meal said, What part of the country do you come from, that you
have to put on your overcoat? The reason those people put their doctors
out of business is not alone in the climate but in their becoming
accustomed to living in God's great and good out-of-doors. We could live
much colder than we do, and live more largely out of doors, and reap at
least some of the benefits that people gain by going abroad.
In looking over the familiar places, when revisiting the earth, that
were once the haunts of the idlers of the town, I was struck by the
entire absence of whittling in which they formerly engaged. Who could
reckon their indebtedness to the pine, which supplied the favorite
material? Each man kept in pretty good order, if he owned nothing else,
a fine piece of cutlery, with a history which he had made familiar to
the minds of his easy-going associates. To whittle with an edgeless
knife is dull sport, hence at intervals, each loafer would lay his right
foot upon his left knee, and upon the leather of his heavy boot
characteristic of that day, would strop the blunt blade until he had put
it again on edge.
_Our Knives Confiscated by Teachers_
Every loss is thought to have its compensation. If whittling is out of
vogue, the benches before the boys at school are, for that reason,
better preserved. A common present to a boy in that day was a pretty
good knife. Boys are very imitative. They sought to whittle and would
notch the school desks until their edges were serried into a semblance
of a cross-cut saw. As the term of school wore on the teacher had made
himself the custodian of most of the fancy hardware owned by the
ingenious scholars. Not remote from the school-house door we turn aside
and stand over the identical spot where we sat, with our heels wide
apart, facing a chum, and played mumble-the-peg, or mumblety-peg, as the
boys pronounced it.
"The boys were playing some old game, beneath that same old tree;
I have forgot the name just now,--you've played the same with me,
On that same spot; 'twas played with knives, by throwing so and so;
The loser had a task to do,--there, twenty years ago."
As the knives were thrown from a series of positions, the winner would
show himself something of the savage still, for when the loser failed to
make the knife blade stick in the ground, he would, with the heavy
handle of the knife, drive a peg into the ground, by a certain number of
blows, which the loser was compelled to draw out with his teeth. The
severity of the penalty was not in using a long peg, like a wooden
tooth-pick, but a short one that could still be struck a blow or two
after it was below the surface of the soil. Thus the unskillful player
had to root for it, while the boys, being called together, encircled him
and jeered.
_Happy Hours by Living Streams_
The appearance and needs of this dirty-faced boy caused the whole bunch
to hie away to the swimming-hole. The Romans seem always to have been
looking out for places to bathe and always finding them. So with boys.
Where is the boy that did not strive to get to the water? Who is there
that did not, in his youth, love some stream? Here is the landscape
toward which the mind, during the interval of a generation, has fondly
turned. Last summer I followed the same old path to exactly the same
square foot of ground on the willow-lined shore from which I had a
hundred times stepped into the stream. I could locate exactly the spot
where a bigger boy, who wanted to race, raised an oar and told me to
jump over to lighten the boat, which I had to do, and there in deep
water, as it was sink or swim, survive or perish, I paddled the best I
could and learned to swim in one short, self-taught lesson.
_Healing in the Pool_
This illustrates again the health instincts of boys which they seek to
obey without knowing the why and wherefore of the feeling that impels
them to bathe often. Swedenborg had to have a revelation from heaven to
enable him to catch a glimpse of his malady which he ought to have known
by intuition. His nature was all the time complaining, and what an
expression that is when men speak of their "complaints," when by pains,
which are warnings, nature is reporting her grievances at head-quarters.
But the heavens were opened and Swedenborg went into ecstasy over the
kindness of the angel whose message to him was a warning not to eat so
much. The body shows divine workmanship as well as the soul. When young
we follow nature and the result is a red-blooded, vigorous youngster,
and if, as we went on in life, we had souls enough to appreciate the
free air and sunlight with their health-giving properties, which are so
lavishly bestowed upon us, we should better reverence the temple in
which the spirit dwells. A recent association formed in Boston for the
erection of a monument to Franklin, used in the picture, on their
certificate of membership, the figure of Franklin with a kite leaning
against him and a view of the telegraph. The kite employed by the
philosopher in his experiment is a plaything of the young, while the
experiment it served to make so successful, is the last word in science
when applied to light, heat and transportation. The picture shows the
connection between our sport and the great realities of life.
_And That Reminds Me_
Play underlies the future responsibilities and events of life.
Recreation has a direct relation to efficiency. I wish that some boys
that I know would play a little more. To watch boys is to study their
character. The story of a boy's life deserves to be written as well as
the life of a man. A boy has been pointed out who on returning from
school is seized and imprisoned in a back parlor with nothing to look at
but his weary lessons. He is pining. His eye needs brightening. His
blood wants reddening. An Oriental traveler, watching a game of cricket,
was astonished to hear that some of those playing were rich. He asked
why they did not pay some poor people to do it for them. The play will
show itself in still greater riches when radical important work is
undertaken and when an entire revolution in the world's methods is to be
accomplished. Exercise, like mathematics, cannot be seized by might nor
purchased by money. It is not true that every hour taken from a child's
play is an hour saved. In some cases, where a boy is given a little time
to play, it is done grudgingly. Thinking now of efficiency they hire,
here, leaders to teach children to play. Vivacious representatives of
the Young Women's Christian Association sent word through the little
villages along the Volga that there would be games for the Russian
children on the village squares. These refugee children had seen so many
sorrows that they had forgotten that they were young. Whole towns turned
out. They looked on in wonder. "Have you brought us bread?" they asked,
as the games were about to be started. The spirit of joy had forsaken
them and needed to be recalled. Little games of competition and
emulation, that were mirth-producing and health-giving, gave the
impression that "Some angels must have been at play." As Thoreau says of
animals, so we may say of human beings, that their most important part
is their anima, their vital spirit.
_One of Life's Schools_
When revisiting the earth I met on intimate terms a classmate. I was in
and out of his place of business many times. He had plenty to do.
Indeed he had too much to do. The distinct impression he made upon me
was, that he was being hurried, all the time, a little faster than he
could well travel. Hurry, if continuous, becomes simply worry under
another name. Let a person catechize his own experiences on this
subject: it will have a salutary effect. He drew me into a confidential
conversation, in which he said, that he was not earning a good living
and asked me what I thought of his situation. I advised him at once to
take a vacation and refresh his mind. He was working like a quarry
slave. A person needs to stand away from a house to see it. He needed to
readjust himself. His mind had lost its spring. A little recreation
would do him more good, than the same time in the treadmill. Sometimes
you see that a man made up what mind he has, when he was too tired; it
was no proper expression of him.
_Loafing and Laboring_
What was once play has become work and what was once work in the garden,
wood-yard, and barn may now become play. A person can stop work and yet
not have any recreation. When a person after excessive physical exertion
is resting he is not recreating. You do not say of persons at rest that
"they shout for joy, they also sing." After sunset, the lonely twilight
hours, with Jacob, represented the accepted, needed rest and after that
came the pensive reverie, the dream and with it the ladder and the angel
ministration. In his own person, every one must have noticed, that after
a period of rest, often as late as Sabbath afternoon, come the holy
influences of the hour, the music that is audible to the fine ear of
thought, the stillness, the purity, the balm. A man, who is busy all the
time or tired all the time, breaks the curfew law of God. The evening
concentrates the retrospect, also the prospect of our lives. If you are
communing with a confidential friend you do not like to have any body
else talking in the room at the same time. You want to become attuned,
like musicians, about to begin to play.
_Foibles of the Famous_
These persons are often quarrelsome, in spite of the fact, that their
constant employment is the production of harmony. It is the effect of
play, to bring into harmony. This is one of its most benign results. A
man, found to be out of harmony with the spirit of the place, or of the
time, only awaits displacing. M. Protopopoff, the last minister of the
interior under the old regime in Russia, told nearly the whole truth
when he said to an Associated Press representative, who visited him in
prison, that his crime consisted of "not understanding the spirit of my
age." Mistaking the time, he became a worker for a separate peace with
Germany. That man of the past is not as black as he first appeared, for
he has at least this redeeming trait, finding himself out of harmony
with the temper of his time, he confesses it, and incriminates himself,
and does not bitterly criticise those participating in the advent of a
new era, which is the common practice, under such conditions.