3 i8 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 



we have mourned unto you, and ye have not 

 lamented," is one that might be applicable to many 

 a similar scene among our own children. 



But there are other games that have something 

 artificial and distinctive about them ; and these can 

 hardly have been invented independently by different 

 races having no connection with each other. It is such 

 special games that are full of archaeological interest, 

 and have much to tell us of our remote ancestry in 

 the East. Battledore and shuttle-cock and kite-flying 

 came from South-Eastern Asia, and a few centuries 

 ago naturalized themselves all over Europe. The 

 childish diversion of cat's-cradle, with its various 

 representations of familiar objects, has been practised 

 from the most remote times by the natives of New 

 Zealand. Tennis so tragically associated with the 

 massacre of St. Bartholomew, during which Charles IX. 

 divided his time between playing at this game and 

 firing out of one of the palace windows upon the 

 Huguenots is one of the oldest sports in the world. 

 It was known to the Greeks under the name of sphair- 

 isis and to the Romans as pila. The game of morra, 

 so common in Naples and Rome, played between two 

 persons by suddenly raising or compressing the fingers, 

 and at the same instant guessing each at the number of 

 the other, was familiar to the ancient Greeks and 

 Romans, and has been perpetuated in the same region 

 during a period of more than three thousand years. 

 The analogous game of odd and even has descended to 

 us from our remote Aryan ancestors, and is as old as 



