Healthful Sports for Boys

For this trick you must use a silk handkerchief. Twisting it, rope- fashion, and grasping it by the middle with both hands. You must request one of the spectators to tie the two...

Each season has its own particular work for the farmer, and he does his work without direction from or consultation with his neighbors or any one else. Each season has its own p...

Every animal, except man, can swim naturally on finding itself in the water for the first time, for it takes a position nearly the same as if it were on land and walking.

Some girls, after they have learned the alphabet of music, and are able to play elementary scales on the piano, are eager to surprise themselves and annoy their listeners by sta...

There is no small boat so popular or so generally useful as the American catboat. The cat can sail into the very eye of the wind, while before the wind she is a flier, and yet s...

Ball in some form is played all the world over. Before Columbus came across, the Indians of the St. Lawrence valley played a ball game with rackets, which the French adopted and...

In England and her colonies there are innumerable football clubs in every town and village, but in this country the game is largely confined to colleges, and even in these not a...

Camping out is not in itself a game, but it would be hard to imagine a more delightful way for the boy or the man who has still something of the boy in him to spend a vacation.

The catcher, or back stop, as he is called by professionals, is usually in front of the observation stand, or a board wall or other obstruction. This is usually ninety feet from...

Outdoor sports in winter are necessarily restricted to the thing that can be done in the snow or on the ice. But what glorious, health- giving, strength-making things they are!...

Spring winds favor kite flying. This is another world-wide sport, and it was popular with old and young in China--the land of the kite--at the time when the Egyptians were cutti...

Like tag, "I Spy" needs no apparatus and no great study. Any boy with keen eyes and nimble legs can play the game better than a man four times his age. Of course, "I spy" is not...

The game of tip-cat, although very old in Ireland, where it is said to have originated, and in all the British Islands, where it is very popular, is comparatively new in this co...

I do not think the advice I have given, as to the games appropriate for each season would be at all complete, if I did not give some advice that will be useful for all seasons a...

The poet Pope says, "The proper study of mankind is man." If he did not mean this to include boys, then I don't quite agree with him, for I have found boys and girls, too, be it...

Do not despise the earth worm. Scientists tell us that without this creature's work in preparing the soil, but little of the earth's surface would be fit for cultivation. To its...

Long before the strong, light, machine-made sled was put on the market or even thought of, the American boy was his own sled-maker, and if this sled was not so sightly, it certa...

Now that our President and other great men have taken to golf, everybody reads about the popular game, but very few know anything about it but the name. To such, the following f...

I must reserve for "Swimming" a good long chapter, but let me say in all seriousness, before writing anything about boating, that every boy should learn to swim before he undert...

Lay a looking glass upon an even table; take a fresh egg, and shake it for some time, so that the yolk may be broken and mixed up with the white. You may then balance it on its...

To begin with, I am not going to tell you how to ride a bicycle. The only way to learn that is to get a wheel, and if it bucks you off, mount again and keep on trying until you...

Why it happens, no one knows, not even the boys themselves, but that it does happen we all know. Tops come in when the marble game is in full blast, and gradually it drives out,...

It is said that hoops are loosing their popularity, but be that as it may, I am very sure they will never go out of fashion with the young folk who delight in a good outdoor run...

During a good deal of world-travelling I cannot recall ever having seen a game of Mumbly Peg played outside of the United States and Canada. I have placed it among the autumn ga...

The American Indians, like the uncivilized of all lands, had their own peculiar battle cry or war-whoop, which it is impossible to reproduce by letters. During our Civil War the...

When teams from different clubs, or schools, or places meet to try their skill in some game requiring skill and endurance, there is no occasion to "choose sides" for that has be...

When children indulge in counting-out games they are quite indifferent to the fact that since the infancy of history and in every land, civilized, barbarous and savage, other ch...

Among the many good and wise things said by the great Lincoln was this: "Give me the boy with promise of the man in him, and give me the man with the memory of the boy in him, a...