Page:Lacrosse- The National Game of Canada (New Edition).djvu/56

Rh grumbling laughter, as if afraid to come up, begins to shake them in epigastric regions, and gradually expanding into hearty haw-haws, gives them a permanent and happy cure. Prudes forget their primness; snobs their propriety; old women fearlessly expose themselves to dismantling; young ladies to the demolishment of crinoline and waterfall; small boys to the imminent fracture of limbs; dogs will rush frantically over the field and after the ball, exposed to annihilation, while cheers rend the air at good play, and an epidemic of laughter seizes the crowd at the ridiculous incidents and misfortunes of unlucky men. It seems very pardonable to enjoy the laughable shipwreck of some overweening dodger and his excited checker, who make battering rams of their bodies, and send dodger, checker, crosses and ball all in a heap. It helps the circulation of the blood even to watch the varied changes on the field as the ball flies through the air, and twenty-four or more active fellows are alive to its career. The lively and graceful attitudes, the skilful manœuvring of body, and the scientific handling of the crosse; the little spirts and leaps—often pretty enough to be affected; the twists and turnings, rallies and