Page:Hockey, Canada's Royal Winter Game.djvu/37

 pastime. Because when a monetary consideration depends upon the result of a match in which professionals figure as participants, roughness, brutality, will characterize it, to the disgust of the spectators, whose attendance sustains the interest and provides the sinews of war which keep the game alive. Moreover, the athletic vice of professionalism should be stamped out for this reason, especially, that when a young man sees his way clear to earn a livelihood at sports, he will seldom fail to throw away on them the most valuable time of his life, by neglecting the duties that his age demands.

3. The sight afforded by a scientific hockey match acts upon the spectators in a variety of ways. Cold, uncomfortably cold, before the game begins, they are gradually worked into a state of warmth by an excitement that makes them forget the weather, their friends and everything but the keen scientific play in progress.

Without comparing it to an oil painting of a chariot race, an Indian buffalo hunt or a fierce battle, what is prettier than the spectacle that a good game presents, of four stalwart, shapely forwards tearing down the ice, playing their lightning combination, of a brilliant rush stopped by an equally brilliant defence play, of a quick dash through a struggling mass of excited