[1] See Robert E. Peabody, "Naval Career of Captain John Manley of
Marblehead", in _Essex Institute Historical Collections_ (Salem,
Mass.) for January 1909.
MARBLES, a children's game of great antiquity, wide distribution, and
uncertain origin, played with small spheres of stone, glass, baked clay
or other material, from one-third of an inch to two inches in diameter.
The game was once popular with all classes. Tradition, both at Oxford
and Cambridge, attests that the game was formerly prohibited among
undergraduates on the steps of the Bodleian or the Senate House. There
is a similar tradition at Westminster School that the boys were
forbidden to play marbles in Westminster Hall on account of the
complaints made by members of parliament and lawyers. An anonymous poem
of the 17th century speaks of a boy about to leave Eton as
"A dunce at syntax, but a dab at taw."