Chip Stone

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Chip Stone
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By Dan Beard

In the gravel-pit or somewhere along the river, creek, lake, or sea-shore may be found disk-shaped stones called "skippers " or "sailors," because the boys can make them sail through the air or skip over the surface of the water.  These stones are used for counters in the game of Chip Stone.  The pure white or semi-transparent skippers, about the size of an old-fashioned copper cent, are the kind selected.

A bull ring about five feet in diameter is made on the ground, or two taw lines about five feet apart are drawn on the sidewalk, and each boy, as in marbles, "lays in" a counter.  If the game is on the sidewalk the skippers are placed in a row between the two taw lines.  If in a bull ring the stones are placed in a small circle in the center of the ring.

In turn each player spins his top and plugs at the skippers in the ring or between the taw lines; if his top fails to spin he "lays in " another skipper.

If his top "dies," that is, stops spinning inside the ring, he "lays in" another stone.  But if his top spins as it should he takes it up on a little wooden shovel and drops it so that the peg hits the edge of a counter; he continues to scoop up and drop the top so long as it will spin, or until it has knocked a counter over the taw line or outside the ring, in which case, as in marbles, he has another turn.

Chip Stone is really a game of marbles in which sailors or skippers are used for ducks and tops are used for taws.  Of course each boy takes great pride in his collection of trophies, each of which he considers as a medal won by his superior skill as a top spinner.  No clumsy, awkward top spinner can hope to have many sailors in his pocket unless he hunts them in the gravel pit in place of competing for them at the bull ring or between the taw lines.

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