The Madisonian. (Virginia City, Mont.) 1873-1915, 1895-10-05
SAME OLD GAMES.
WE ARE PLAYING THOSE INVENTED
BY THE ANCIENTS.
h American Indians Played Baseball.
Cricket, Lawn Tennis, Chess and Check
ers Date From Away Back-Novelties In
Games Rarely Catch On.

cricket, Lawn Tennis, Chess and Check
ers Date From Away Back-Novelties In
Games Rarely Catch On.
Few Of the hundreds of new games
that are invented every year become
popular. They may be seen in any toy
store by the score-lawn games and
parlor games, games Of cards and games
Of ball, games for young and for old.
They are a melancholy sight, for not
Of them will ever take the place of
the old standbys of infancy and boy
hood. Even the names of most of them
will never be heard Of by the majority
Of American boys and girls. This is the
logic of history.
1t seems an easy matter to invent a
game. The best games are SO simple,
yet a popular game was never yet in
vented. Every one of them has grown,
and the best Of them have been growing
for hundreds of years. Scientific men
tell us that all sorts of queer creatures
once lived on this earth-great lizards
with wings; sea monsters, half whale,
half seal, and rhinoceroses larger than
elephants. All these have died away be-
cause they were not fitted to live, while
those animals that were fit for life have
gone on growing better and better, till
some-the horse, for instance-we could
not do without. It is just so with
games. Those live that are fit to live,
and the rest die.
Our best games form a sort of arts
tocracy. Their p~edigrees run back to
very ancient times, and no modern up
start can compete with them. Take
baseball and cricket, for instance, prob
ably the most popular outdoor games of
modern times, the one in our own coun-
try, the other in England. They are
first cousins, and their hold on Amer
lean and English boys is in all proba-
bility due to the fact that they each unite
two strong lines of descent-that of the
bat and ball games-to which tennis,
lacrosse. hockey, croquet and, more dis
family, billiards also belong, and that
Of the goal games, such as tag, puss in
the corner, l spy and dozens Of others.
All the nations we know anything
about had bat and ball games ages ago.
Nobody invented the bat and ball. They
grew up with our civilization from the
time when little savages used to knock
abont a pebble or a fruit with a stick.
So with thet goal games-they have al
ways been popular. Their name is still
legion. The goal part-that is, the run
ming from base to base-is a much more
important part Of the.game in baseball
than it isin cricket, and for this reason
! we Americans r justified in looking
upon baseball as the better game, all
other things being equal. To be4 sure,
neither baseball nor cricket is the game
it was 800 years ago, but, both have
grown, not changed.
Any one who chooses may trace the
growth Of cricket from the year 1900.
1t is not as easy to tracethe pedigree Of
baseball, for, just as with a great many
American families, there is a break in
the record back in colonial times. It is
known to have been played by the IN
dians. 1t is q thoroughly American
game, and no n loves it less because
some people claim FOUNDERS us it's an
cestor and others reject the claim with
scorn.
AS for indoor games, we may prove
their nobility in just the sameF way.
Chess comes down to us from the an
cient Hindoos, by way of Persia. Check
ers We're played in Egypt, and then in
Greece and Rome. Cards made their ap-
pearance in Europe in 1850, aud the
Chinese say that they used them two
centuries earlier than this. Tenpins was
certainly played3in the thirteenth GEN.
fury, and probably, much,> earAer. ~
these have grown butt they have Hot
changed their nature.
Lawn tennis isaonly an oGsAost It the
old game Of court tennis, said to have
been brought into Gaul by Roman sols
diers aud still played. Again only 4