Page:Lacrosse- The National Game of Canada (New Edition).djvu/199

176 of no avail. Get up a reputation for persistent checking, and your value cannot be estimated.

It is not uncommon to see a good dodger, hard pressed, lose the ball from sheer nervousness, and the best calculated throw ruined, because of the proximity of a checker. The golden rule, therefore, is “never give up.” Even if down on your marrowbones, stick to it as long as you can. The pluck and persistency of the hero in the ballad of Chevy Chase may be a worthy example, who,

Rough Checking.—Nothing has done more injury to Lacrosse than rough play in general, and rough checking particularly; and it is a lamentable fact that certain individuals stand out so prominent for maiming their antagonists, as to suggest some more valid reason for such play than mere accident. In the ordinary business and associations of life, there is a community of interest and courteousness which puts the barier upon rough conduct; but in a field sport, there is an abandon and a little of that return to the original barbarism of our ancestors, which,