By Dan Beard
Local Names of Marbles.
But Malaney must have secured his supply from somewhere, because I know he did not make
them himself, and he always had a quantity on hand of "potteries,"
"plasters," "chinas," "crystals," "agates,"
"alleys," and "commies."
Atlantic coast boys do not use these names, but they use the same marbles. We had a
tradition that the potteries were made at a pottery near the Brighton Hotel in the suburbs
of Cincinnati. What truth, if any, there is in this tradition I am unable to state. In New
York I seldom see this rich brown mottled marble, whose glossy surface is marked by three
rough dots.
The "crockery" never had the splashes of white that distinguished the
"burned agate" of New York, nor the green of the "moss agate" of the
same place. Both of the latter were unknown to the Western boys 125 years ago.
At the beginning of the 19th century marbles were sometimes called "bowls,"
and all came from Nuremberg, down the Rhine to Rotterdam, and thence to all other parts of
Europe.
How Marbles are Made.
Stone marbles were manufactured in immense quantities fit Saxony for exportation to the
United States, India, and China. The common marble is manufactured of hard stone quarried
near Coburg, Saxony, and the process is practically the same as that used by nature in
grinding out the little round pebbles originally used by the children of long ago.
Nature, though constantly busy, is slow. We do not want to wait a thousand or maybe a
million years for her to get our marbles ready. Our fingers might be too old to shoot with
them, so we adopt nature's principles, but make more haste. In place of frost man uses a
hammer to break the stone into fragments.
The hammer breaks the bard stone into small squares, or, more properly, cubical shaped
blocks. These are placed a large millstone one hundred or two hundred at a time. The
millstone has several grooves cut in it in the form of rings, one ring inside another, or,
as your Geometry would put it, in the form of concentric circles. Over this a block of oak
of the same size as the lower stone rests on the small square fragments and is kept
turning while water flows upon the bottom stone.
Power is supplied by a water-wheel, and when the machinery is set in motion the little
cubes are compelled, by the pressure and motion of the upper piece, to roll over and over
in their circular tracks, and round and round and round they travel like circus hones in a
ring. In fifteen minutes' time the mill does what nature takes years to accomplish, and
the little blocks of stone are turned into small stone balls. These are the unfinished
marbles and need something.
One such mill can turn out two thousand marbles a week, and if there are four or five
sets of millstones running, eight thousand or ten thousand a week can be manufactured. In
another part of the establishment the waterwheel turns a number of wooden barrel-shaped
receptacles, something like the copper ones used for making candy in this country. Inside
the wooden casks are hard stone cylinders. These revolving cylinders smooth the marbles,
which are compelled by the motion of the machinery to keep up a constant rubbing against
each other and against the stone cylinder. When they are smooth enough the dust made by
the last process is emptied from the casks and fine emery powder substituted. This gives
finish and polish to the marble.
Common Marbles.
The small, gray marbles are what the Western boys call "commies" or
"combos." They are often painted bright colors, but the paint soon wears off and
they look like little dried clay balls. They are not much valued, and five
"commies" usually represent the value of one "plaster."
The Century Dictionary gives an "alley" as one of the definitions of a
marble. On what ground it bases this information I am unable to state. "Agate,"
"meg," "duck" or "real" would be just as good a definition.
"Meg" or "duck" would be better, inasmuch as, in different sections of
the country, both of these terms are used to define marbles of any description; while
"alley" in almost all parts of the country means a particular kind of marble.
The Alley.
In some parts of Ohio and Kentucky the marble designated by the latter name is a small,
hard sphere with yellowish-white ground, streaked with wavy lines of bluish green. These
are not the same as the "Croton alley" or "Jasper" of New York. The
latter, I believe, are made of glazed and unglazed china marbled with blue, and are
generally larger marbles than the so-called alleys of the West.
The China and Plaster.
In Cincinnati and the adjoining cities of Covington and Newport, KY., a china is what
its name implies-china. This term, when I was a boy, was used only to designate a glazed
china; the unglazed ones we called plasters, from their resemblance to that substance.
Both of the latter marbles are decorated with lines of various colors, sometimes
crossing each other, forming plaids, and again arranged in circles and called bull's eyes.
They are made in wooden molds and are dried, baked, and painted like any other chinaware,
The Bumbo and Peawee.
"Bumbo," "bumboozer" or "bowler" are names applied to
very large marbles of any description. A "peawee" is the name used for any very
small marble.
Crystals
is a general name applied in many parts of the country to all glass marbles, including
"opals," "glimmers," "bloods," "rubies," etc. They
are all very beautiful, but their beauty is only skin deep, and when used much they become
dull and fall of nicks. Some of these glass marbles are called "agates" in the
East, and hence the genuine agate is called a "real," to distinguish it from the
counterfeit glass one. Glass marbles are made by melting the glass and pressing the hot
substance in polished metal molds, the halves of which fit so neatly that no trace of a
seam or line is visible on the glass to mark where the parts of the mold join.
The "Lucky Taw."
Our lucky taw, or the marble we used when a skilful shot was required, was carefully
selected for its weight and symmetry, and was generally an agate or real. Agates are
beautiful gems of agate or carnelian, varying in color from a smoky gray to a blood red,
or variegated with mottlings or stripes of different colors. Agates are made into marbles
at Oberstein. The workmen are very skilful. The stone is first broken into fragments of
the proper size, and then, by means of a hammer, clipped into rude balls; these balls are
then worn down on the face of a large grindstone, and are managed with great dexterity by
the workmen, who in a few minutes bring them into perfect spheres, after which they are
polished by hand on lapidary wheels.
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