Page:Lacrosse- The National Game of Canada (New Edition).djvu/68

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THE PRESENT GAME.
51

become the strong instrument of the trained mind and free heart, open to every pure, high, and heroic feeling." Its moral influence is beyond dispute.

SCIENCE AND DEVELOPMENT.

There are a few disparagers of Lacrosse who refuse it fealty, because, as they assert, "there is no science in it," though they fail to remember that it is as yet in its infancy among the only men—the whites—who can develop its science, and that it has only recently been brought under the restraint of standard laws, which materially check the old rough-and-tumble play. It takes more than one season to make a good Lacrosse player as well as a cricketer; and when we study to practise on the principles maturing, there will be just enough of science in the game to make it popular, and not too much to make it a bore.

What is "Science" as implied in a sport? The wrestling and leaping of hounds at play is not science. A cat can spring with more nimbleness than a Lacrosse player, and a young setter will get at a ball on the ground with his fore-paws or his teeth, however quick it may be tipped or frisked with a crosse—but that is not science. Science in a sport implies