Games of the Old World

1895

An Italian editor has been investigating the principal games in fashion in Europe during the dull weather. He finds the present craze in England is clay modeling, the selected victims — and generally misunderstood — being Mr. Gladstone and "Sir Harcourt."

In Belgium, especially in the "Rockersclubs," slow smoking races are the fashion. These end themselves favorably to bets. Big Flemish pipes are loaded with half an ounce of tobacco, and he is winner who can smoke his own through in the longest time without relighting; present record, 67 minutes to one pipe.

Leaping beans are the amusement of Italy and southern France. The inventor has had whole fields of them sown in Mexico and the larvae carefully preserved. The bean leaps best on hot plates, but the southerners paint them as kings and queens and use a little gunpowder. Then the figures go into convulsions, and the game is called "L'anarchie."

Germany, of course, is occupied with the war game, and France has selected "divinertes," of guesses of the future.