Page:Child-life in Japan and Japanese child stories (Ayrton, Matilida Chaplin. , 1901).djvu/64

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
46
Child-Life in Japan.

come and lodge in the house. The father was also aware that if he bequeathed his daughter his money at once, she would spend it extravagantly. Upon consideration, therefore, he hid the money in the pillar, and instructed his daughter as related. In accordance with the father's prophecy, the man came and lodged in the house on the predicted day, and by the art of divination discovered the thousand pounds.


GAMES.

T


HE games we are daily playing at in our nurseries, or some of them, have been also played at for centuries by Japanese boys and girls. Such are blindman's buff (eye-hiding), puss-in-the-corner, catching, racing, scrambling, a variety of "here we go round the mulberry bush." The game of knuckle-bones is played with five little stuffed bags instead of sheep bones, which the children cannot get, as sheep are not used by the Japanese. Also performances such as honey-pots, heads in chancery, turning round back to back, or hand to hand, are popular among that