Don't Lose Your Marbles

Before the advent of TV, kids amused themselves with games and sports like archery, swimming, and ball as well as indoor parlor games such as riddles, puzzles, and charades.

Try your hand at this simple game of marbles, adapted from The Boy's Own Book of 1851:

"The Pyramid"

Draw a small circle on the ground. Inside the circle, one player builds a pyramid by placing three marbles in a triangle with a fourth marble on top of them. Any other player may then shoot at the pyramid from an agreed distance. For each shot, the player gives a marble to the one who keeps the pyramid. If the shooter strikes the pyramid with his taw, he keeps as many of the pyramid marbles as he drives out of the circle. Meanwhile, the pyramid must constantly be rebuilt by the owner.

You can find a taw in Blythe's painting if you look in the boy's hand. The taw is the shooter marble!

Source: The Boy's Own Book: A Complete Encyclopedia of All Athletic, Scientific, Recreative, Outdoor and Indoor, Exercises and Diversions (Boston: Munroe and Francis, 1851).

Pictured: David Gilmour Blythe, 1815–65, Boy Playing Marbles, about 1858, oil, 22 x 26 1/2 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase.