Jackstraws

Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)

a familiar parlor game. It is played with straws or with strips of bamboo, wood, ivory, bone, or the like. The straws are tumbled in a confused heap on a table. The players take turns. The first withdraws straws, one at a time, as long as he can do so without joggling the heap or moving any other straw. The right to play then passes to the next. The player who has the most straws at the conclusion of the game wins. Sometimes the straws are carved into various shapes, as arrows, javelins, and the like, or are of different colors to which different values are assigned, as one, five, ten, twenty, twenty-five. The pieces may be withdrawn with the finger or angled for with a hook provided for the purpose. The name is supposed to be a corruption of jerk-straws by which, indeed, the game is known in some parts of England. Jack-in-the-Pulpit, or Indian Turnip , a woodland herb closely related to the calla. It is found from Nova Scotia to Florida and east Kansas. The last leaf on the flower stalk widens into a broad blade that curves in a protecting green hood over the flower, making the "pulpit" or spathe. A wrinkled, turnip-shaped corm confers the name of Indian turnip. The green spadix standing in the spathe gives the children's name which the poet has well expressed: Jack-in-the-Pulpit Preaches today, Under the green trees Just over the way. Green is his surplice, Green are his bands; In his queer little pulpit The little priest stands. Jacob's Ladder , a familiar garden plant of the phlox family. The stem is erect, from one to three feet high. The name is derived from the regular order in which nine to twenty-one leaflets are arranged on the long leaf stem. The stamens and style are exserted beyond a bright blue, bell-shaped corolla. In the northeastern part of the United States , the species is found wild only on mountains and in swamps, but it is abundant in the meadows of the Rocky Mountains and far northward. Called also Charity.