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PREFACE.
will be regarded, by any who had the misfortune to buy it, as one of those productions of youth, which, in maturity, we would fain disown.
The difficulty of writing practically about Lacrosse, was then, as it is now, that there had never been anything practical written on the subject. Every principle and point of play had to be laid down from personal experience and experiments, and "pow-wows" with the best players; and, at first blush, it seemed a difficult task to write anything about the game. Moore, in his Diary, however, mentions a German savant who wrote several folio volumes on the "Digestion of a Flea!" After that accomplishment, no one should despair of producing at least one volume on any subject.
It may seem to some, well acquainted with Lacrosse, as if I had given too much space to the rudiments of the game; but I intend this book for the novice as well as the expert, and wish even the latter to believe with me, that there is a gradation of learning in the use of the crosse, as there is with the
