Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1881-09-20
LAWN TENNIS.


| FOR MORALITY THEREBY = HOW CRoQUET
| wITHERs AND BLASTS WHATEVER IS GOOD IN
| HUMAN NATURE.
Croquet has lost its popularity, and it is only
In remote western towns that one can still hear
| the Click OF the maliet as it strikes some bald
but youthful head or the wall of the too
eager girl who has mashed her own foot. Else
where croquet has not been played for nearly
Two years. The croquet mallet has been turned
into bean-pOle, and the balls have been thrown
at vagrant dogs. 60 that Of the eleven million
croquet sets formerly in the possession of pri-
vate citizens of the United States, there are now
| not more than sixty-three sets which are COM
| plete and fit for use.
The disappearance of this pestilent game is a
great gain for the cause of morality and public
oTder Next to hOrse-dealng, which. accord
| ing to the Westminster Catechism ''worketh
the corruption Of the whole nature" of him who
sells horses croquet has more whitening and
blasting effect upon whatever is good in human
| nature than has any other agency 1t leads to
| lying almost as certainly as does trout-fshing.
MI Herbert Spencer. in his tables of social
who play croquet will systematically claim
to have passed hoops that they have not
passed, and ninety per cent will insist that they
never stirred the ball which received the stroke
OF the maet in that peculiar feat called Zero
queting" OF course, those who habtually in
dulge in flights of the imagination-to put it
mildly-such as these must inevitably lose ailre-
spect for the truth. They who cheat their lovers
at crOqaet will find it easy to deceive their has-
bands in the game Of married life. From cheat
ing to quarreling Is step which in croquet is
is short and inevitable In nine games out OF every
ten the recording angel is compelled to take
notice that Miss Smith has audibly mentioned
that lit is perfectly sickening to see how that
o1,z
| openly called Miss Robinson 'mean, hateful
thing" In its latter days croquet was charae-
| terized not merely by cheating and bad lam
guage, but by assassination. 1t was so easy for
quick-tempered and indignant girl to hit her
partner over the shins as a rebuke for his bad
play. or to strike faithless lover over the head
who had formed partnership with hated
rival, and perhaps defended her from the &C
cusatiOn OF cheating, that mallet outrages be-
came frightfully prevalent In England alone,
fractured, one hundred and ninety -four were Sc
nousiy bruised, either on one or both
shins, and six hundred and five young
ladies were hit in the region of the
shoes by maliets thrown by other young ladies.
A like state of things existed about the same
time in this country, but in the absence of trust
worthy statistics it can only be said that in all
probability the proportion of mallet Outrages
was as great here as in England It was this
terrible feature of the game which caused
IL.
and led to the substitution of lawn-tennis in it's
place.
The peculiar feature of lawn-tennis is the net
which is stretched between the players with the
view OF preventing adversaries from assaulting
one another. The players use light ball. with
which it is impossible to infiict any serious in
jury, and instead Of clubs they play with instru-
ments somewhat resembling the battledore of
the last generation, and unfit for offensive pur-
poses except, perhaps, in connection with very
obi hos
itself to parents and peaceable people by it's ap-
parent safety, and SO far it has certainly been
unstained by any murderous ARRAYS. Still. it
must be evident to every one that the net COM
monty used is far too frail. It could be broken
down by the rush of an Infatuated and heavy
girl, and it would be easy for an agile girl to
climb over it. If lawn-tennis is to maintain its
reputation as safe and peaceable game the net
should be made Of wire instead of Irvine; it
should be at least foot higher, and the upper
edge OF it should be strewn with broken glass
set in cement, or furnished with sharp iron
spikes. Sooner or later some mild but imbe-
Gle player will madden his adversary to such
an extent that nothing but personal violence
will be any comfort to her. and she will get over
or through the frail Irvine net with a sudden
ness that will dazzle the unhappy victim.
Accidents on lawn-tennis grounds have oc-
CURED, though not during the progress Of the
game. In places where the net is left in po-
sition over night it sometimes catches the heed
grounds Of one of the Moosehead lake hotels.
the early riser can often find a local greenback
statesman caught by the ears in the lawn-ten-
mis- net and utterly unable to extricate himself
The catch Of small boys and c0lOred servants
at the Lake George hotels is also very large
but has never attracted the attention which the
painful fate of leading citizen of Greenfield,
Conn.,, secured last July. The citizen in
question had manageable daughter who was
fond OF lawn-tennis. and who twas serenaded one
evening by young druggist with an accor-
dion. While the serenader was under her win
dow, and in the act of singing ''Baby Nine" and
accompanying himself on the accordion, the
leading citizen, with the best intention, issued
from the house with a club and let lOOsef both
the dogs. The druggist. with great presence of
mnd,t ran round the house and entered the
front door, while the angry father rushed wildly
across the lawn in search of him and came in
violent collision with the lawn-tennis net. He
carried it completely away. and in falling to the
ground entangled himself hOpelessly i'm its
meshes. In these circumstances he was set
upon by the well-meaning but too impulsive
dogs, and it was not until he had been severely
gnawed and denuded Of most of his garments
that he could convince them that their zeal was
not according to knowledge.
Still, in spite of the incidental troubles to
which the lawn-tennis net may give rise. the
game is certainly vast improvement upon
croquet, and its general adoption in place of the
former perniciOus game will doubtless arrest
oHc HoOu Vi lliilHOTdilty anu crime which 1OunQ
its origin in crOquet.-N Y. Times.
The Communicating Power of Ants.
From the Popular Science Monthly.
Huber, FOrel, Kirby and Spence, Dujardin,
Purmeister. Franklin and other observers have
all expressed themselves as holding the opinion
that ants are able to communicate information
to one another by some system of language or
signs. The facts, however, on which the opinion
of these earlier observers rested, have not been
stated with that degree of caution and detail
which the acceptance of their opinion would re-
Qure. But the more recent observations of