“DIABOLO.”

Northland Age, Volume IV, Issue 48, 20 July 1908, Page 8

“DIABOLO.”

SOCIETY'S NEW GAME.

Making our way one dreary wet night in Paris orer those famous cobblestones which lead to the Grand Guignol, Dr. Distkt-Maddick and I paused to watch a little girl who was throwing up a huge reel into the air. She held two sticks in her hands, much as Loie Fuller does ini her serpentine act. These sticks were connected by a long, slack string on which she twirled her reel. After many furious gyrations she threw it into the air, and—smart little Parisienne that she was—caught the reel dexterously again on the slack string as it fell.

On leaving the wonderful (little theatre where "En Plongee” had held "tout Paris” tight like a vice we missed the child.* But she had communicated her fun. Tfro or three students in the Rue Mogador had seen her, and—it is all Lombard Street to a China orange—-had bought her strange apparatus, and were practicing the thing outside a brasserie to the amusement of the loiterers who were drinking their last bock. Next day the merry little doctor and I saw it again in the Boulvard des Capucines. It has got further than that now. It has run over the Cqptinent like an electric shock, and puissants seigneurs and grandes dames loitering in Trouville or mooning about their balconies on the Plage at Ostende are trying to catch the tricky reel. Presently Mr. George R. Simms will drop battledore and shuttlecock for “Diabolo” in Regent’s Park. But that is not quite yet. Young men in London—like Mr. George R. Sims, for he is still a young man, in spite of the almanac—are q, little shy about the thing at present.

But here In Folkestone, within a stones-throw—a good stones-throw—-of Paris, the thing is rampant. It fills the place like "The Merry Widow” waltz or Leslie Stuart's

"Bell of Mayfair” music, which, in its autumn, is still being wafted across 'the lawns from the delightful little theatre on the boulvard yonder.

The sun scorches down on the Leas, and thousands of visitors pretend to be listening to the music.

They are doing nothing of the sort for there on the lawn yonder—caring nothing for the plangent, lacerant octaves of "1812”—is 'my little friend from outside the Guignol, whirling her reel at "Diabolo.” Look up at the Grand yonder, and you will see the children—friends, I hope, with the child on the lawn—spinning their reel in "Diabolo.”

The crowd rises—for the band has struck the opening chords on which everybody rises—and you turn to the promenade. There the Etqn boy and his big sister stroll home to lunch, with their “Diabolo” sticks under their arms, and as they pass they throw a glance—a Masonic glance—at my little friend on the lawn, who has no time for lunch. Perhaps she has no lunch, though she may have the time. Others follow with their sticks and reels—much as they followed yesterday with their glasses—to the Kreuzbrunnen.

And the thing is passed from mouth to mouth like a charm word—“Diabolo.” It peers out in print here and there. It comes trippingly oil tongue. It will christen a new headgear and the glovers will seize it for something with a new stripe.

Meanwhile, here in beautiful, teeming, sun-baked Folkstone—the town that was built in a garden—it has become th 6 rage. It is more fashionable than bridge, more difficult than early rising, and almost as amusing as “Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch.”

My little friend outside the Guignol has invented a new' mode. Yet when she goes back she will scuttle about over those cobblestones outside the Guignol as though she had never disturbed the scheme of things. And nq one will tell her.

Yet it is such as she w r ho makes the “manners and customs” of every epoch.—L. B. E., in the "Evening Standard.”