I don't suppose there is any use in trying to find out when the game
of "Jack Stones" was first played. No one can tell. It certainly
is a good many hundred years old.
All boys and girls know how to play it. There is the little rubber
ball, which you toss in the air, catch up one of the odd iron prongs,
without touching another, and while the ball is aloft; then you do
the same with another, and again with another, until none is left.
After that you seize a couple at a time, until all have been used;
then three, and four, and so on, with other variations, to the end
of the game.
Doubtless your fathers and mothers, if they watch you during the
progress of the play, will think it easy and simple. If they do,
persuade them to try it. You will soon laugh at their failure.
Now, when we older folks were young like you, we did not have the
regular, scraggly bits of iron and dainty rubber ball. We played
with pieces of stones. I suspect more deftness was needed in handling
them than in using the new fashioned pieces. Certainly, in trials
than I can remember, I never played the game through without a
break; but then I was never half so handy as you are at such things:
that, no doubt, accounts for it.
Well, a good many years ago, before any of your fathers or mothers
were born, a little girl named Alice Ripley sat near her home
playing "Jack Stones." It was the first of July, 1778, and although
her house was made of logs, had no carpets or stove, but a big
fireplace, where all the food was made ready for eating, yet no
sweeter or happier girl can be found today, if you spend weeks in
searching for her. Nor can you come upon a more lovely spot in which
to build a home, for it was the famed Wyoming Valley, in Western
Pennsylvania.
Now, since some of my young friends may not be acquainted with this
place, you will allow me to tell you that the Wyoming Valley lies
between the Blue Ridge and the Alleghany Mountains, and that the
beautiful Susquehanna River runs through it.
The valley runs northeast and southwest, and is twenty-one miles
long, with an average breadth of three miles. The bottom lands--
that is, those in the lowest portion--are sometimes overflowed
when there is an unusual quantity of water in the river. In some
places the plains are level, and in others, rolling. The soil is
very fertile.
Two mountain ranges hem in the valley. The one on the east has an
average height of a thousand feet, and the other two hundred feet
less. The eastern range is steep, mostly barren, and abounds with
caverns, clefts, ravines, and forests. The western is not nearly
so wild, and is mostly cultivated.