Page:Lacrosse- The National Game of Canada (New Edition).djvu/67

 50 enticingly on the muscles; and, in accordance with the truest physiological rules of exercise, it has its origin in, and is kept up by, an active mental stimulant, involving a healthy variety of movement which may be proportioned to any age or constitution. It educates the body to speed and agility, and gives one a feeling of freshness and lightness, the true sign of good health. Galen says games of ball cure low spirits, "be it with hand or racket."

Does Lacrosse not do any service for mind as well as body? Certainly it does. It knocks timidity and nonsense out of a young man, training him to temperance, confidence, and pluck; teaches him to govern his temper if he has too much, or rouses it healthily if he has too little. It shames grumpiness out of him, schools his vanity, and makes him a man. It develops judgment and calculation, promptness and decision; destroys conventionality, and creates a sort of freemasonry which draws men of the same tastes and sympathies together. It has one result, too, which the good Dr. Arnold, of Rugby, foresaw in such healthy exercises when he made them part of his system of instruction, viz., a mingling of Greek with Christian education, "in which the body should