Draughts
"Waite to black and black to white, Now give the challenge--wage the fight."--CLARKSON.
DRAUGHTS is a modern invention, and is a good preliminary to chess. It is not so intricate a game, for the pieces are of equal value till they become kings, and can only move one way; but like chess, success depends entirely upon skill, and one false move frequently occasions the loss of the game. Draughts seems to have come into vogue in Europe about the middle of the fourteenth century, and for a long time there were two methods of playing it; the one commonly used in England being the French game, which is played upon a chess-board, and the other the Polish game, which requires a board with ten squares or chequers in each row, and twenty men. The men in the Polish game can only move forwards as they do in the French game, but they have the privilege of taking backwards and forwards, and the king, when made, if not opposed by two men close together, can move from one corner of the board to the other The Polish game admits of most variety, and is in our opinion infinitely the best, but it is little played in this country, except by foreigners, many of whom during the Great Exhibition year proved themselves adepts at the game.