Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 79, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 April 1910 — CHILDREN’S GAMES UNALTERED. [ARTICLE]

CHILDREN’S GAMES UNALTERED.

Favorites To-Day Were Favorites Centuries Ago with Little Folks. Youngsters grow up, develop and al ter, but their games, the frivolities of school yards, street corners and vacant lots, are unchangeable. A man who knows kids has investigated, the Kansas City Times says. He romped with half a dozen little bundles of huskiness In his neighborhood yesterday, parrying both shocks to dignity and loss of breath. He vouches for The statement that little folks' games never change. Further he reports as follows: “The games are precisely the same as when I was small’and robust, only maybe a little more rough and tiknble. haven’t changed a bit. “ ‘Hide and go seek’ —why, I understand they played it years and years ago in England, just as I played it and the way the children play it now. Some one is ‘it’ and everybody else scrambles away to hide, and then after it’ has counted fifty or sixty or a hundred everybody is anxious -to touch ‘it’s’ base before ‘it’does. Of course you remember that whoever is caught first has to be it’ the next time. “And ‘Pussy wants a corner,’ where ‘pussy’ or it’ again tries to slip Into a corner while one boy or girl is changing places with another. Not a fractional change can be found in it. And ‘London Bridge Is Falling Down,’ where some one is caught by the bridgeholders and has to pay a penalty or-choose to support of the halves'of the bridge in the tug of war that finally results. Can you find any alteration? ' - “And all of the varieties of tagwood, Iron, grass or paper ‘tag’—how could it be supplemented to make R any more enjoyable? And ‘Run, Sheep, Run’—you remember it, of course, don’t you? And ‘Cheese,’ another sort of ‘Hide and Seek,’ where you can run qply while it’ is counting ten and holding it’s’ eyes shut. And ‘King, King Calico,’ another abridgement of ‘tag* in which the little folks try to run across the street before it’ tags 'em. And ‘Saratoga,’ or ‘Guess,’ of ‘New York,’ as it used to be called when I played it, with the procedure all the same: One ‘s.ide’ .Iljustrates some process, as picking cherries, for Instance, and the other side guesses what they’re doing. And as soon as they guess they rush to tag members of the other side and include them in their party. Of course you know all about it. Didn’t you play it the same way, twenty, thirty years ago? “Grown-ups have to abridge add revise their games and sports every year to keep up interest. They’re Jaded and latiated, but the kids are more consistent and more simply satisfied. They like their games and there are enough of them for variety.”