The sluggish Concord River used to overflow
its banks and cover the broad meadows for miles, where we
found excellent skating, and where the water would be only
a foot or two in depth. The boys could skate for ten miles
to Billerica and ten miles back, hardly going over deep water,
except at the bridges, the whole way.
Sleigh-riding was not then what it is now. There were a
few large sleighs owned in the town which would hold thirty
or forty persons, and once or twice in the winter the boys
and girls would take a ride to some neighboring town when
the sleighing was good.
The indoor games were marbles, checkers, backgammon, dominoes,
hunt-the-slipper, blind-man's-buff, and in some houses, where
they were not too strict, they played cards. High-low-jack,
sometimes called all-fours or seven-up, everlasting and old
maid were the chief games of cards. Most of these games have
come down from a very early antiquity.
The summer outdoor games were mumble-the-peg, high-spy, snap-
the-whip, a rather dangerous performance, in which a long
row of boys, with the biggest boy at one end, and tapering
down to the smallest at the other end, would run over a field
or open space until suddenly the big boy would stop, turn
half around, and stand still and hold fast with all his might.
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