Page:Lacrosse- The National Game of Canada (New Edition).djvu/108

88 cricket. Individual separate training as systematically as laid down in books on the subject, applied to Lacrosse, is not only inconvenient for the large majority of players, but decidedly inadvisable; but every one can avoid excesses of livings eat plain strengthening food, retire and rise early, and exercise sufficiently to develop a fair amount of wind and endurance. For ordinary play, however, absolute training is unnecessary, if the man lives anyway reasonably. The nature of Lacrosse is such that it will not permit "first Twelve" men to live immorally. Indulgence in liquor and tobacco tell on the wind and muscle, especially in America. The nut-brown ale of England, home-brewed in inns historical, is a different thing to the bottled trash and barrelled [sic] bitterness imported or made and sold in Canada. The less we know of their taste the better. We can only recall to mind one or two instances where players "finished off" after practice by a spree; and they went to the dogs, and would have gone sooner, we dare say, but for their indulgence in a game which occupied and utilized a share of their leisure.

Before a match, players should nurse themselves by temperance and gentle exercise. A night's