German children sing "Liebe Mary, dreh dich herum," and other German
songs; and all over the city they sing, "Lazy Mary, will you get up?"
and "All around the mulberry bush," and "I came to see Miss Jinny Ann
Jones, and how is she to-day?" They play tag and hide-and-seek, and,
sitting on the door-steps, they play a buttermilk game, where no one may
laugh, and a great many other games. In some parts of the city the boys
and girls play with one another, as they do in the country, but in other
neighborhoods the girls play alone. They are fond of dancing, and the
Italian man with his piano is often surrounded by fifty or a hundred
little girls in the middle of the street, waltzing gracefully, and
making for the passers-by a very pretty picture. In the evenings they
are generally allowed to stay down on the street until nine o'clock; but
that is the hour when careful mothers see that their younger girls are
all at home, though the older girls are often allowed to stay out until
ten o'clock. The girls go to school until they are thirteen or fourteen,
and they study with eagerness, and worry over their lessons. In New York
it seems to be an especially great calamity to be kept at home for even
one day, and the little girls give the doctors much trouble by not
telling when they have sore throats or feel sick, for fear that they
will be told that they must not go to school. At half past three they
come home carrying great bundles of books, and you wonder how they have
time to play or to do any house-work. But Saturdays are very busy days,
and they learn to scrub and to clean the house, and somehow they learn
to wash, so that little girls of twelve years of age often show me
dresses that they have washed and ironed themselves. They don't know so
much about sewing, but most of them learn to crochet lace, and they have
little crocheting schools in the summer, where they teach one another.
They sit in "the yard" or in front of the house, and sometimes each girl
brings a penny and they have a party. They have more pennies than
country children, I am sorry to say, for they buy too many candies and
cakes. They teach one another all the songs that they know, and
sometimes one girl tells a story or reads to the others. When the mother
knows how to sew well she generally teaches her daughters, but many of
the mothers do not know much about sewing. There are sewing-classes in
the public schools, but these classes are so large that the children
generally seem to learn only how to sew badly.
They want to know how to sew, and nothing makes a lady so popular with
school-girls as to tell them that they can have a sewing-class at her
house. Then if after the sewing there can be stories and singing and
games, the girls are sure to have a fine time. They save their pennies
to buy the cloth on which they work. I have seen many a mother much
pleased with the tiny stitches her daughter has learned to make. A blue
cheese-cloth duster, neatly hemmed, makes a nice present from the
youngest ones to their mothers, while the older girls make clothes for
themselves or for the children at home.
In the house where I live there are a good many young women who are fond
of teaching, and they have friends who come and help with the
sewing-classes, so that we have seven sets of school-girls every week.
They give themselves names like the Rosebuds, the Sunshine Club, the
Butterflies, the Rainbow Club, and the Bluebells. There are many other
girls that we know who are waiting anxiously for their chance to come,
and the mothers beg us to let their daughters join the sewing-clubs. We
have cooking-classes a few times a week when our cook can let us have
the kitchen, and these are liked the best of all. The girls have the fun
of eating what they have cooked, and they have a jolly time even while
they are washing dishes. The older girls who go to work like the
cooking-classes, too, and some of them, when they get home early on
Saturday afternoons, make biscuit and cookies and apple-sauce for
supper. One girl made cookies for the callers who came to her house on
New-Year's day, and they liked them better than cake.
The girls enjoy the cooking more than sewing, because they are tired
after their day's work. The younger working-girls want mostly to talk
together and laugh and sing and dance. Sometimes we are very sorry for
the fifteen-year-old girls, they look so young, and they work very hard,
but most of them are quite light-hearted, after all. The little
cash-girls often tell us what fun they have, and even the flower and
feather girls and the girls in the box-factories and in the
candy-factories enjoy so much being with one another that they forget
all about their troubles. At the noon hour they sing and tell one
another stories. They bring their lunches from home or they send a girl
out to buy the lunch, and some of these are the girls who make their
noonday meal of cream-cakes and pickles. They like to read the same
books that girls read everywhere, but sometimes they do not understand
how other lives can be so different from theirs, how other girls can
have their own rooms all to themselves, and can have all the nice things
that come to girls who have never lived in small rooms, with nineteen
other families in the same house.
The most wonderful thing that comes into the lives of city girls who
have grown up on the crowded East Side is their first trip to the
country. They don't know the most ordinary things. One of my friends,
who had tried every word she could think of, finally told some children
to run up on the fire-escape, and they all scrambled for the piazza, as
she thought they would. The country seems very lonely at first, and the
dark rather terrifying. They have never known what dark is, for lamps
are burning all night in most of the tenements. The stillness, too, is
impressive. One little girl said, "There is not any noise here except
the noise we make." When they get over their first sense of loneliness,
they begin to see all kinds of wonderful things, and some of the girls I
know are so much interested in the leaves and trees that they soon know
more about the trees in midsummer than many a country girl. Their only
knowledge of the spring is gained from the popular songs. They have
heard in that way of the flowers that "bloom in the spring." They
sometimes expect these songs to be literally fulfilled. "There's the
farmer," said one child, "and there's the corn, but where is Johnny?"
One child I found on the roof of the house where she lived playing going
to the country, and she said she played it every day. We wish sometimes
that we could pick up all the children, and carry them off where fresh
air and green grass belong to all.
The girls in the country are sometimes surprised to see what good
manners our little girls have. One girl I knew said to her father, "I
never saw such polite girls; they say 'thank you,' and 'you're welcome,'
and 'excuse me,' when they are just playing with one another." One
reason for this is that they see so many people all the time that they
are not self-conscious and shy, and when they think that it would be
nice to say, "Excuse me," they are not afraid to do so. Then, too, they
grow up where there are so many people that each one must learn to be
considerate of his neighbor, or there would be continual trouble. We
find some spoiled children here as elsewhere, but generally they have
learned to give up their own way because of the younger ones, and there
is really very little quarrelling. We are often surprised when we think
how seldom we hear a child cry. They take care of one another and bring
one another up, and though the result is that they are not so well
taught as they ought to be--and I am sorry to say they don't learn
obedience as they should--yet each one finds out that she must not
expect too much for her own share.
A stranger in New York, seeing the crowds of people and the sidewalks
swarming with children, might go away with a feeling about a
tenement-house neighborhood quite different from the feeling of one who
knew the people well. The houses, indeed, are often as bad as they can
be, for without light and air a house is, of course, totally unfit for
human habitation; and there are also some very unhappy homes; but as a
rule up through the tenements at six o'clock you will find the father
reading his paper or holding the baby while the mother cooks the supper,
and the children come climbing up the stairs--just the same kind of
children that we find everywhere.
THE VOYAGE OF THE "RATTLETRAP."
BY HAYDEN CARRUTH.
V.
Next morning we were awakened by Old Blacky kicking the side of the
wagon-box with both hind feet.
"If that man with the ever-blooming cow comes down," said Jack, "I'll
swap him Old Blacky."
Just then we heard a loud "Hello!" and looking out, we found the man
leading a small yellow pony.
"I just 'lowed I'd come down and let you fellers make something out of
me on a hoss trade," said the man.
"Well," answered Jack, "we're willing to swap that black horse over
there. He's a splendid animal."
"Isn't he rather much on the kick?" the man asked.
"He does kick a little," admitted Jack, "but only for exercise. He
wouldn't hurt a fly. But he is so high-lifed that he has to kick to ease
his nerves once in a while."
"Thought I seen him whaling away at your wagon," returned the man.
"Couldn't have him round my place, 'cause my house ain't very steady."
[Illustration: "VIGILANTEES."]
We had not gone far this morning when we met two men on horseback riding
side by side. They looked like farmers, only we noticed that each
carried a big gun in a belt. They simply said "Good-morning," and passed
on. In about half an hour we met another pair similarly mounted and
armed, and in another half-hour still two more.
"Must be a wedding somewhere, or a Sunday-school picnic," said Jack.
"But why do they all have the guns?" asked Ollie, innocently.
"Oh, I don't know," answered Jack. "Varmints about, I suppose."
In a few minutes we came to a man working beside the road, and asked him
what it all meant. He looked around in a very mysterious manner, and
then half whispered the one word "Vigilantees!" with a strong accent on
the last syllable.
"Oh!" said Jack, "vigilance committee."
"Correct," returned the man.
"Horse-thieves, I suppose?" went on Jack.
"Exactly," replied the man. "Stole two horses at Black Bird last night
at ten o'clock. Holt County Anti-Horse-thief Association after 'em this
morning at four. That's the way we do business in _this_ country!"
We drove on, and Jack said:
"What the Association wants to do is to buy Old Blacky and put him in a
pasture for bait. In the morning the members can go out and gather up a
wagon-load of disabled horse-thieves that have tried to steal him in the
night and got kicked over the fence."
We either met or saw a dozen other men on horseback, always in pairs;
but whether or not they caught the thief we never heard.
[Illustration: JACK SHOT A GROUSE.]
So far we had had very poor luck in finding game; but in the afternoon
of this day Jack shot a grouse, and we camped rather earlier than usual
so that he might have ample time to cook it. There were also the plums
and grapes to stew. We made our camp not far from a house, and, after a
vast amount of extremely serious labor on the part of the cook, had a
very good supper.
The next day passed with but one incident worth recalling. In the
afternoon we crossed the Niobrara at Grand Rapids on a tumble-down
wooden bridge, and turned due west through the Keya Paha country. This
was so called from the Keya Paha River (pronounced Key-a-paw), a branch
of the Niobrara which comes down out of Dakota and joins it a few miles
below Grand Rapids. The country seemed to be much the same as that
through which we had travelled, perhaps a little flatter and sandier.
Just across the river we saw the first large herd of stock, some five or
six hundred head being driven east by half a dozen cowboys.
A short distance beyond the river we came to a little blacksmith shop
beside the road. As soon as Jack saw it he said:
"We ought to stop and get the horses shod. I was looking at the holes
the calks of Old Blacky's shoes made in the wagon-box last night, and
they are shallow and irregular. He needs new shoes to do himself
justice. If this blacksmith seems like a man of force of character,
we'll see what he can do."
Jack looked at the blacksmith quizzically when we drove up and whispered
to us, "He'll do," and we unhitched. The pony had never been shod, and
did not seem to need any artificial aids, so we left her to graze about
while the others were being attended to.
"Just shoe the brown one first, if it doesn't make any difference," said
Jack.
"All right," answered the blacksmith, and he went to work on the decent
old nag, who slept peacefully throughout the whole operation.
He then began on Old Blacky. He soon had shoes nailed on the old
reprobate's forward feet, and approached his rear ones. Old Blacky had
made no resistance so far, and had contented himself with gnawing at the
side of the shop and switching his tail. He even allowed the blacksmith
to take one of his hind feet between his knees and start to pull off the
old shoe. Then he began to struggle to free his leg. The blacksmith held
on. Old Blacky saw that the time for action had arrived, so he drew his
leg, with the foolish blacksmith still clinging to it, well up forward,
and then threw it back, with all his strength. The leg did not fly off,
but the blacksmith did, and half-way across the shop. He picked himself
up, and, after looking at the horse, said:
[Illustration: "'PEARS 'S IF THAT AIN'T A COLT ANY MORE."]
"'Pears 's if that ain't a colt any more."
"No," answered Jack; "he's fifteen or sixteen."
"Old enough to know better," observed the blacksmith. "I'll try him
again."
He again got the leg up, and again Old Blacky tried to throw him off.
But this time the man hung on. After the third effort Blacky looked
around at him with a good deal of surprise. Then he put down the leg to
which the man was still clinging, and with the other gave him a blow
which was half a kick and half a push which sent the man sprawling over
by his anvil.
"The critter don't seem to take to it nohow, does he?" said the
blacksmith, cheerfully, as he again got up.
"He's a very peculiar horse," answered Jack. "Has violent likes and
dislikes. His likes are for food, and his dislikes for everything else."
"I'll tackle him again, though," said the man.
But Blacky saw that he could no longer afford to temporize with the
fellow, and now began kicking fiercely with both feet in all directions,
swinging about like a war-ship to get the proper range on everything in
sight, and finally ending up by putting one foot through the bellows.
"Reckon I've got to call in assistance," said the man, as he started
off. He came back with another man, who laid hold of one of Blacky's
forward legs and held it up off the floor. The blacksmith then seized
one of his hind ones and got it up. This left the old sinner so that if
he would kick he would have to stand on one foot while he did it, and
this was hardly enough for even as bad a horse as he was. He did not
wholly give up, however, but after a great amount of struggling they got
him shod at last.
"We'll call him the Blacksmith's Pet," said Jack.
Good camping-places did not seem to be numerous, and just after the sun
had gone down we turned out beside the road near a half-completed sod
house. There was no other house in sight, and this had apparently been
abandoned early in the season, as weeds and grass were growing on top of
the walls, which were three or four feet high. There was also a peculiar
sort of well, a few of which we had seen during the day. It consisted of
four one-inch boards nailed together and sunk into the ground. The
boards were a foot wide, thus making the inside of the shaft ten inches
square. This one was forty or fifty feet deep, but there was a long rope
and slender tin bucket beside it. The water was not good, but there was
nothing else to drink. Near the house Ollie found the first cactus we
had seen, which showed, if nothing else did, that we were getting into a
dry country. He took it up carefully and stowed it away in the cabin to
take back home as an evidence of his extensive travels.
For several days we had not been able to have a camp-fire, owing to the
wind and dryness of the prairie, for had we started a prairie fire it
might have done great damage.
"We don't want the Holt County Anti-Prairie Fire Society after us," Jack
had said; so we had been using our oil-stove.
But this evening was very still, and there seemed to be no danger in
building a camp-fire within the walls of the house, and we soon had one
going with wood which we had gathered along the river, since to have
found wood enough for a camp-fire in that neighborhood would have been
as impossible as to have found a stone or a spring of water.
We were sitting about on the sods after supper when a man rode up on
horseback, who said he was looking for some lost stock. We asked him to
have something to eat, and he accepted the invitation, and afterward
talked a long time, and gave us much information which we wished about
the country. Somebody mentioned the little well, and the man turned to
Ollie, and said.
"How would you like to slip down such a well?"
"I'm afraid I'm too big," answered Ollie.
"Well, perhaps you are; but there was a child last summer over near
where I live who wasn't too big. He was a little fellow not much over
two years old. The well was a new one, and the curb was almost even with
the top of the ground. He slipped down feet first. It was a hundred and
twenty feet deep, with fifteen feet of water at the bottom, but he
fitted pretty snug, and only went down about fifty feet at first. His
mother missed him, saw that the cover was gone from the well, and
listened. She heard his voice, faint and smothered. There was no one
else at home. She called to him not to stir, and went to the barn, where
there was a two-year-old colt. It had never been ridden before, but he
was ridden that afternoon, and I guess he hasn't forgotten the lesson.
She came to my place first, told me, and rode away to another
neighbor's. In half an hour there were twenty men there, and soon fifty,
and before morning two hundred.
"There was no way to fish the child out--the only thing was to dig down
beside the small shaft. We could hear him faintly, and we began to dig.
We started a shaft about four feet square. The sandy soil caved badly,
but men with horses running all the way brought out lumber from Grand
Rapids for curbing. The child's father came too. He listened a second at
the small shaft, and then went down the other. Two men could work at the
bottom of it. One of the men was relieved every few minutes by a fresh
worker, but the father worked on, and did more than the others
notwithstanding the changes. All of the time the mother sat on the
ground beside the small shaft with her arms about its top. At four
o'clock in the morning we were down opposite the prisoner. He was still
crying faintly. We saw that to avoid the danger of causing him to slip
farther down we must dig below him, bore a hole in the board, and slip
through a bar. But a few shovelfuls more were needed. The work jarred
the shaft, and the child slipped twenty-five feet deeper. At seven
o'clock we were down to where he was again, though we could no longer
hear him. We dug a little below, bored a hole, and the father slipped
through a pickaxe handle, and fainted away as he felt the little one
slip down again but rest on the handle. We tore off the boards, took the
baby out, and drew him and his father to the surface. There were two
doctors waiting for them, and the next day neither was much the worse
for it."
The man got on his horse and rode away. We agreed that he had told us a
good story, but the next day others assured us that it had all happened
a year before.
[TO BE CONTINUED.]
THE SCIENCE OF FOOTBALL: CATCHING, PASSING, TACKLING.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.]
[Illustration: FIG. 2.]
[Illustration: FIG. 3.]
[Illustration: FIG. 4.]
[Illustration: FIG. 5.]
[Illustration: Fig. 6.]
[Illustration: FIG. 7.]
[Illustration: FIG. 8.]
[Illustration: FIG. 9.]
[Illustration: INTERSCHOLASTIC SPORT]
[_Beginning with this issue, and continuing for four weeks, this
Department will be largely taken up by a series of papers an the
Science of Football, prepared by Mr. W. H. Lewis, of the Harvard
football team of 1893._]
That football is a scientific sport seems to be pretty generally
conceded by all. It is more like military science than any other; and it
has this in common with all other sciences, that only so much can be
learned from the books and blackboard. The student must go to the
laboratory for the major part of his knowledge. The laboratory of
football is the _gridiron_.
Football as a science divides itself naturally into the Individual and
the Team. The Individual may be subdivided into Fundamentals and
Position Play. Fundamentals comprehend passing, catching, dropping on
the ball, kicking, blocking, making holes, breaking through, tackling.
The Team is divided chiefly into two parts--the offence and defence. The
offence comprises the direct attack, the indirect or strategic play, and
kicking. The defence embraces the general defence, the theory, styles of
defence, defence to particular plays, and defence at given points of the
field. In this first paper I shall treat of the Fundamentals of
Individual Play.
[Illustration: FIG. 10.]
_Passing._--There are three kinds of passes--the straight-arm, the
underhand, and the overhand. The straight-arm pass is used generally for
long low passes to the open, because of its swiftness and accuracy. The
pass is made by taking the ball in the palm of the hand, the ends
pointing up and down the arm, the fingers firmly clutched over the end
farthest from the body; then extending the arm at an angle with the body
of about 65°, using the opposite foot as a pivot, bring the arm and body
quickly, with a swing and a snap, directly in line with the object of
the throw; then let the ball go, end over end, revolving upon its
shorter axis, as in Fig. 7.
The underhand pass is used in passes made by the quarter to the
full-back. The ball is held as in the straight-arm pass. The pass should
be started from about an angle of 45° to the rear of the body, the arm
passing by the body to the front, describing an arc of a circle, letting
the ball roll off the tips of the fingers. The body should be well
forward and the knees bent, similar to the position of a bowler. See
Fig. 8.
The overhand pass starts from the taking of the snap, the arm being
carried above the shoulder, going through about a three-quarter circle
and then going off on a tangent.
_Catching._--The ball should be caught with the arms and the body. The
backs may be allowed more latitude in this matter, however. In fact, the
more of a baseball catch they can make, the more quickly can they return
the ball. For the forward, the ball should be caught in one of two ways:
first, take the ball, whether punted or thrown, on either side, letting
the arm on the side where you catch the ball be under the ball, and the
other arm and hand hooked over the upper end of the ball, as shown in
Fig. 4; second, a punt or thrown ball may be caught by receiving the
ball in the groin, right-angling the body around it and placing both
hands over it.
[Illustration: FIG. 11.]
_Dropping on the Ball._--There are two kinds of balls the player must
learn to drop on--a moving ball and a dead ball. There are just four
ways of falling upon a ball: first, dropping upon the knees, to break
the fall, then covering the ball with the chest; second, dropping
straight from the toes, breaking the fall with the elbows and by landing
upon the ball with the chest; third, diving upon the ball, by leaving
the ground and leaping in the air, the fall being broken by the elbows
and the ball; fourth, sliding, feet foremost, and taking the ball under
the arm in passing it. Take first a moving ball. A ball moving away from
the runner may be obtained in any of these ways; the first method is the
simplest and preferable. Let the player run to within reaching distance
of the ball, suddenly drop upon his knees, and then gather the ball up
under his chest. A moving ball should not be dived for unless its motion
has nearly ceased, because the player is likely to either overreach or
underreach it.
[Illustration: FIG. 12.]
To obtain a ball dropped in the rush-line or at the player's feet, the
player should throw his feet straight out behind him, falling upon the
ball with his chest, breaking the fall with the elbows and ball. There
is another moving ball, which the player, strictly speaking, should not
fall upon at all. To obtain a ball moving directly towards a player from
the front, he should meet it at right angles, throwing the body right
across the path of the ball and gathering it up in his arm, as in Fig.
10.
The ball is very seldom "dead" in a game, but it may sometime occur that
twenty-two men are after a ball that has lost nearly all motion. In that
case the most skilful man at diving upon the ball will be more than
likely to get it. The player should run to within about once and a half
his length from the ball, and then leave the ground, the same as a
swimmer makes a dive, care being taken to land upon the ball, to offset
the force of gravity.