Page:Hockey, Canada's Royal Winter Game.djvu/17

 CHAPTER I. ☘

ANIEL WEBSTER'S definition of hockey reads as follows: "A game in which two parties of players, armed with sticks or clubs, curved or hooked at the end, attempt to drive any small object (as a ball or a bit of wood) towards opposite goals."

The learned lexicographer must, of course, refer to the game of hockey as played in England, or to the game as played in Canada in the good old days when anything from a broom handle to a shilalah was used as a hockey stick, and a tin can rendered service as a puck.

To trace back the sport to its very birth is not within the province of this little work, besides, its earliest history seems lost in a background of Egyptian darkness. Truly it is a fact, though, that the foundation of our glorious scientific game was laid on "any small object and a curved stick," for the