The Daughter of the Chieftain

I don't suppose there is any use in trying to find out when the game

of "Jack Stones" was first played. No one can tell. It certainly

is a good many hundred years old.

All boys and girls know how to play it. There is the little rubber

ball, which you toss in the air, catch up one of the odd iron prongs,

without touching another, and while the ball is aloft; then you do

the same with another, and again with another, until none is left.

After that you seize a couple at a time, until all have been used;

then three, and four, and so on, with other variations, to the end

of the game.

Doubtless your fathers and mothers, if they watch you during the

progress of the play, will think it easy and simple. If they do,

persuade them to try it. You will soon laugh at their failure.

Now, when we older folks were young like you, we did not have the

regular, scraggly bits of iron and dainty rubber ball. We played

with pieces of stones. I suspect more deftness was needed in handling

them than in using the new fashioned pieces. Certainly, in trials

than I can remember, I never played the game through without a

break; but then I was never half so handy as you are at such things:

that, no doubt, accounts for it.

Well, a good many years ago, before any of your fathers or mothers

were born, a little girl named Alice Ripley sat near her home

playing "Jack Stones." It was the first of July, 1778, and although

her house was made of logs, had no carpets or stove, but a big

fireplace, where all the food was made ready for eating, yet no

sweeter or happier girl can be found today, if you spend weeks in

searching for her. Nor can you come upon a more lovely spot in which

to build a home, for it was the famed Wyoming Valley, in Western

Pennsylvania.

Now, since some of my young friends may not be acquainted with this

place, you will allow me to tell you that the Wyoming Valley lies

between the Blue Ridge and the Alleghany Mountains, and that the

beautiful Susquehanna River runs through it.

The valley runs northeast and southwest, and is twenty-one miles

long, with an average breadth of three miles. The bottom lands--

that is, those in the lowest portion--are sometimes overflowed

when there is an unusual quantity of water in the river. In some

places the plains are level, and in others, rolling. The soil is

very fertile.

Two mountain ranges hem in the valley. The one on the east has an

average height of a thousand feet, and the other two hundred feet

less. The eastern range is steep, mostly barren, and abounds with

caverns, clefts, ravines, and forests. The western is not nearly

so wild, and is mostly cultivated.