Page:Out-door Games Cricket and Golf (1901).djvu/24

Rh schools, public, secondary, and elementary, villages, towns, and districts. At football the same thing occurs; the spectators at a League match in Birmingham, Sheffield, Newcastle, and all over Lancashire, amount to ten, twenty, and even forty thousand. Golfers travel all over the United Kingdom and Ireland in search of links. There has been a revival of croquet; where there were forty years ago about six tennis courts, now there are about twenty-five; while in every club and hotel and many houses billiard-tables are found, where in evenings men of every profession and trade, and those with none, get much enjoyment, exercise, and perspiration from the gentle art of billiards. Englishmen have the love of games in their marrow as pipeclay was in the marrow of Mulvaney, and when we consider all these facts we may indeed regard the ball with respect, affection, and reverence.

Our feelings towards those unfortunates who take no interest in games, and have never played in any, are those of pity. There are men whose lives have been written and are even considered great, whose minds have been laid bare before the public, but who yet have never