"Jacks"

Ten thousand bouncing, snatching girls battled grimly last week on Manhattan playgrounds for a gold medal. They battled with small rubber balls and tiny iron "jacks."-- Under the fatherly eye of the New York World, which was also cocked toward circulation, metropolitan girlhood was summoned to a tournament for the jacks championship of the city. Some squatted, some kneeled, some sat tailor-fashion in the dust. Each one spread her ten jacks, bounced her rubber ball and snatched up one jack, caught her ball, bounced her ball, snatched up another, a third, until she had ten; again she spread (technical term "scrambled") her jacks and bounced her ball, snatching them up two at a time; three at a time; four at a time; until she bounced her ball and scooped all ten at once into a dainty, dusty fist. This process scored a game. The medal went to small Josephine Landt who attained the incredible (to clumsy adults) total of 25 games and eight jacks before she missed.

Josephine's glory was not unalloyed; she had failed to smash the record of small Florence Cutler, who completed 29 games to win the title last year.

Even Florence is not wholly peaceful in her glory, for there bites at her consciousness of superiority a rumor, well founded but unwelcome on Manhattan playgrounds, that a girl from Cincinnati once bounced and snatched her way through 40 flawless games.

--A "jack" is a six-legged iron cross about as big as a marble.