Page:The autobiography of a Pennsylvanian.djvu/47

 have been a deity of those black-eyed little people who inhabited Europe before the inroads of the Celts and whose only remnants are the Basques of the Pyrenees.

My father bought for us children a box of white dominoes. They were a great source of enjoyment, but we quarreled over them and were warned. We quarreled again. He called us from the dining-room to the sitting-room, where he sat at a high desk given to him by his father, put the dominoes into the box, threw them into the fire and sent us away to repent. Afterward the box was found slightly charred on a shelf in a tall closet set into the end of the fireplace. These were his methods of discipline. It illustrates the tenacity of memory when I say that the “double three” had a slight defect in the ivory on the back.

My father drove two horses. The stableman, Tim McGlone, painted a checker-board, and with black and white bone buttons from old breeches taught me to play. I had a knack for it and soon beat him. Dr. J. Warren Royer of the Trappe, still living at a great age, came to consult my father about a case and saw me playing. He was an adept. The Royers of the Trappe were given to all kinds of games. He took nine men and won easily from my twelve. We played more and ere long he needed ten, then eleven, and finally twelve, and lost with them all. In the village Dr. David Euen had a drug store and here Dr. Isaac Z. Coffman and others congregated to talk politics and play checkers. One day there was great astonishment when a boy of ten walked in, threw down the gauge of combat and carried off all the honors. About the same time Dr. David F. Anderson, who was reading medicine with my father, made a set of wooden chessmen and taught me to play chess.

Sarah Ann Radcliffe came to the house and made our clothes. When we were done with them they were cut into strips, sewed together, rolled into hard balls weighing about three pounds each and sent to Munshower to be woven into Rh