Northern Wisconsin advertiser. [volume] (Wabeno, Wis.) 1898-1925, 1922-08-04

when the downpour of bursting shell
became too distracting.
| Some historians assert that the
| Greek games formed the foundation
for the lucid thinking and the lofty
art concepts that made her product
classic. Yet the Olympian and the
| Pythian games at their best afforded
no such spontaneous, and at the same
time intricate, interplay Of muscle and
mind as baseball.
Throwing, catching, and running are
as old as man; but It took the Ameri-
can genius for play, no less distinc-
tive than the American genius for
science, industry, and commerce, to
weld these motifs into a game that
| puts a premium on skill, yet admits
of infinite variety; that rawest youth
or trained athlete may play; and that
Presidents and office boys steal away
| to watch.
If the Greeks paved the way for
classic art by teaching adults to play
and Great Britain followed in her
footsteps with more spontaneous
and democratic fervor, America now
appears as the most forward-loolzlng
nation in her attention to children's
Fairgrounds. There is nothing arti-
fetal about the games taught to chill
dren on American Fairgrounds. They
are products of a rich heritage of
play tradition. Neither written history
nor the faint traces Of prehistoric
times carry us back to period when
children did not play.
Excavators in Central America
found tiny rattles of bone and clay,
as old as the pyramids of Egypt, in
graves alongside baby skeletons. In
! Attica's tombs were uncovered dolls
of pre-classic days, made of ivory and
terra Gotta. Little Hippodamia had
miniature bed, with Stats, for his
dolls, for boys formerly played with
dolls. Roman children's toys were
held in such high esteem by their
elders that when the children grew
too old for them they were offered to
| patron gods.
Games With the Ball.
kicking are the fundamental muscular
| operations of Americas characteristic
sports-baseball, football, tennis, and
golf. The peoples of antiquity mani
tested all these instincts in cruder
| FORM
Luzon hillmen, the Polynesians and
the Eskimo and Sumatra islanders had
| ron y11o hu III
Greeks played it, and the Roman
| game harpastum, derived it's name
from the Greek 81 SEIZE" which Is
evidence that carrying the ball was
| practiced then. With shoes Of hide,
the medieval Italians played a game
which seems the direct ancestor of the
Anglo-Saxon college sport Gaelic
scholars point to football game in
Ireland before the time of Christ, and
until comparatively recent times
| Shrove Tuesday was distinctively an
| occasion for football as is our Thanks
giving today.
In old England football was even
rougher than most sports Of those
| hardy times. James I thought It was
"meeter for lameing than making able
the users thereof" Henry VIII and
| Elizabeth ruled against it, Edward IT
| frowned upon it for its interference
with archery and also because of the
commotion it aroused.
Likewise, one must go pack to the
! Greeks and Romans for the origin
OF tennis, which descended to Eng.
| Nv
century a game with ball and plated
gut bat was played on horseback.
! Then came la boude," in which the
horses were abandoned. Henry VIII
of England was a youthful devotee,
while Louis XIV's heavy expense &C.
counts show salaries paid to care
takers of his courts.
II tennis has royal lineage. golf,
which was later regarded as a rich
mans game, had most plebeian be-
| ginnings. Contrary to a widespread
belief, 1t seems lot to have originated
In Scotland, but in northern Europe.
Apparently 1t was first played on ice.
being one of the winter sports adapted
to the physical geography Of the Low
Countries.
BY the Fifteenth century golf had
attained such vogue in Scotland that
1t threatened the cherished archery,
and 1t is classed with "fute-ball" and
| other "unproftabll SPORTS by James
~. That monarch, however, seems to
have disregarded his own edict, as
did enough other Scotchmen to keep
| the game alive.