Outdoor game

“ The summer outdoor games were mumble-the-peg, high-spy, snap- the-whip, a rather dangerous performance, in which a long row of boys, with the biggest boy at one end, and tapering down to the smallest at the other end, would run over a field or open space until suddenly the big boy would stop, turn half around, and stand still and hold fast with all his might. ”

“ Boys of my age led an outdoor life, indulging in seasonable sports which rotated from top-spinning to marbles, to ball-playing, principally a game called town-ball. We all had shot-guns, so that in season and out we went bird-hunting and rabbit-hunting. ”

“ The endless variations of leap-frog should not be forgotten in devising outdoor games: and tournaments of long or broad jumping and high jumping are good. Stilts and the games to be arranged with them are also another great resource. ”

“ And now it seemed as though, less than six months later, they were ready to embark on what promised to be the most exciting trip of all, a visit to the wilderness of the great Northwest, in search of big game.
Reaching the clubhouse, they quickly stowed their boats away. From this time on there would probably be scant time for aquatic sports. The tremendous undertaking they had in view would, very likely, occupy all their spare moments.
"Now let's have that letter, Frank. We want to con it so that every word will be photographed on our brains from this time on. ”

“ While all the games and sports described in this chapter are not absolutely confined to outdoors, almost any game in which violent physical exercise results is better if played in the open air rather than in a house or gymnasium. In fact, we should only play indoors when the weather makes it impossible for us to be outside. ”

“ These are about a thousand of the outdoor games they play down our way—not a bad number, when you think that our children can only play after they come home from school or work, and that they hardly ever play on Sundays on account of their clothes, or in winter because the evenings are too dark, and that the rain often keeps them indoors anyhow, and that the lads over 14 don’t play at all. ”

“ The number of things to do is without limit and the boy so uninventive as to be at a loss with all outdoors before him must be in a sad way. Hence there has been no effort made in this chapter to make an exhaustive list of outdoor games, only those being given which are suggestive, that is, which can be infinitely varied according to your ingenuity ”

“ I explained to them that America had just developed a new form of outdoor sport, and that, because all the world knew that the home of true sportsmanship in all its phases was England, we turned naturally to their country to exploit our game. ”

“ Many of the parlor and outdoor games are equally suitable for indoors. All the card games and back-gammon, checkers, etc., are invaluable resorts in case of a long dreary day, but there are a few other recreations which, in some families are saved for such occasions. ”

“ The game, which may be played by either two or four players, consists in endeavouring to drive the ball over the entire course from hole to hole in the fewest possible number of strokes. At the start a player takes his position on what is called the “teeing ground” and drives the ball in the direction of the first hole, the position of which is shown in the distance by a flag or tin sign with a number. ”

“ The youths of the village during the holidays had plenty of sport, outdoor and indoor, which kept out the cold by wholesome exercise and recreative games. Many a hard battle was fought with snowballs, or with bat-and-ball on the ice; the barns were the scenes of many a wrestling match or exciting game at skittles ”

“ Running risks, we must remember, is always foolhardy, but to nullify danger by means of science and skill is an aim worthy of the noblest kinds of sport. It will, of course, be objected that the lack of exhilarating conditions, and of the stimulus of fresh air, deprives the sport of the usual benefits of outdoor games. But the air at the bottom of a cave 100 or more feet deep is usually as pure and sweet, and not seldom as dry, owing to its free circulation, as that on the hills. ”

“ A guide from Maine or Canada might be comparatively helpless in Florida or the Tropics, where the vegetation, wild animal life, and customs of the woods are entirely different. Most of us are hopeless tenderfeet anywhere, just like landlubbers on shipboard. The real masters of woodcraft—Indians, trappers, and guides—are, as a rule, men who do not even know the meaning of the word “woodcraft.”
Some people think that to know woodcraft, we must take it up with a teacher, just as we might learn to play golf or tennis. It is quite different from learning a game. ”

“ It will be noticed that some of the outdoor games, and others devised for indoors, require some apparatus, like tennis and croquet, or back-gammon boards and magic lanterns, but the majority need only the company, and—let it be added—the disposition to have a good time. ”

“ A game played over an extensive piece of ground which is divided into certain arbitrary divisions called holes. A golf course is usually undulating with the holes laid out to afford the greatest possible variety of play. ”

“ Game is the essence of the woods and free, uncivilized Nature—the division line that separates the wild from the tame—and he whose nerves have never tingled at the electric whir of a game-bird’s wing and the responsive boom of the double-barrel, has remained insensible to one of the most inspiring exhilarations of the senses. Just as the library refreshes and stimulates the mind, so do the woods, the streams, and the stubbles become a field of health for the body, and by the invigorating and elevating recreation they yield do field sports serve to strengthen both mind and body. ”

“ That the common species of game are plentiful is superfluous to say. On holidays and at week ends, during the open season, it is a familiar sight to witness the khaki-suited brave looking sportsmen, with guns or fish baskets and rods, clambering onto the trains or hiking to the nearest point where the welcome woods and the realm of habitation meet. ”

“ It is true that there is fairly abundant big game and much country of great scenic beauty outside the boundaries, but we entered a game paradise and a land of unrivaled scenery when we crossed the park line. ”

“ Beyond the lake the ground rose in a pass evidently much frequented by game in bygone days, their trails lying along it in thick zigzags, each gradually fading out after a few hundred yards, and then starting again in a little different place, as game trails so often seem to do. ”

“ The estates are ample, farms in fact, with a sort of villa and park character, woods, pastures, meadows. When the leaves turn crimson and brown and yellow, and the frequent lakes reflect the tender sky and the glory of the autumn foliage, there is much driving over the hills from country place to country place; there are lawn-tennis parties on the high lawns, whence the players in the pauses of the game can look over vast areas of lovely country ”

“ I regard the nature of these people, as I have had the opportunity of considering it, as more serious and intense than that of any other, and I know only one recreation beyond those that are the simplest and most essential, as of roaming in the untamed country, fishing, shooting, and hunting, that is agreeable to such a nature. They also know it; they have declared for a national game. ”

“ The boys are boiling over with animal spirits, and, like their civilized brothers of the same age, are continually running about, chasing each other, wrestling, shooting arrows and playing games, of which the familiar stick game seems the favorite.
Whenever the column draws near any cover, which may shelter game, such as a few bushes in a ravine, or the fringe of low willows along some little watercourse, the younger men and boys scatter out and surround it. They beat it in the most thorough manner, and any game which it contains is driven out on the prairie, surrounded and killed. ”

“ CHAPTER VIII OF THE MARVELOUS SITTING ABILITY OF THE TIN-CANNERS—OF THE PARKS IN WHICH THEY SIT—OF THE HORSESHOE BUGS AND THE CHECKER AND DOMINO BEETLES—OF THE DELICATE MOVEMENTS OF A CELEBRATED HORSESHOE TOSSER—AND OF THE INTERNATIONAL HORSESHOE CLUB
And so we return to the great craving of the sun-hunters: to sit in the sun and take the air. Golf is a matter of which they know little; tennis is regarded as a game for muscleless smart Alecks; polo might be a sort of dog or a movie actor—they’re not quite sure about it; sea-bathing is a diversion in which they rarely indulge. ”

“ The extensive, undulating commons and heaths dotted with broken patches of Scotch firs and hollies on the ferruginous sand north of the Downs, afford—where the manorial rights are enforced—still greater variety of sport. On this wild ground, accompanied by my spaniels and an old retriever, and attended only by one man, to carry the game, I have enjoyed as good sport as mortal need desire on this side of the Tweed. ”

“ Excellent grounds are provided for all outdoor sports; and in the evening every man one meets has a tennis racket or a golf stick in his hand, and on his face that look of enthusiastic anticipation which is seen only on a British sportsman's face. ”

“ There are cool, shaded parks and woodlands, where you can sit under the big, spreading trees which shut out the hot summer's sun—where you can loll on blankets of thickly matted blue grass and read and sleep to your heart's content—far from the madding crowd and the world's fierce strife and turmoil.... Here the golf player will find one of the finest golf links his heart would desire. ”

“ Golf may be played on any park or common, but its original home is the "links" or common land which is found by the seashore, where the short close tuft, the sandy subsoil, and the many natural obstacles in the shape of bents, whins, sand holes, and banks, supply the conditions which are easential to the proper pursuit of the game. ”

“ In the park itself, beneath the softly rustling palms, an audience of silent sun-hunters, sprawled on benches which surround the edges, gaze intently at the long double row of horseshoe pitchers and at a score of long tables crowded with men who are brooding over obviously important matters. The men at the tables are the skilled checker,{118} chess and domino players of the tin-can camps and the sun-hunters’ colonies. ”

“ Having excellent preserves of game in the neighbourhood, he is happy to inform travellers that he can provide them with good sports in wild boar, deer, and hare hunting, and wild duck and partridge shooting. ”

“ It is the great diversity of its physical features, offering within a restricted area all the requirements for animal life, which fits it for the home of big game. Abundant food supply, shelter from wind and weather in winter, cool resorts on the uplands in summer, favorable localities for breeding purposes and the rearing of young, all are found here. The Park supplies what is really needed—a zoölogical reservation where big game may roam unmolested by the intrusion of man, rather than a zoölogical garden inclosed by fences, and the game fed or sustained more or less by artificial methods. ”

“ Those of my readers who live in or near large cities will probably know that it is an out-door game played with a racquet and a ball, but for the benefit of those who do not know it, I will give a few hints as to the laying out of the court, and the implements necessary for the game.
First of all, you must have a lawn; not necessarily a perfectly level piece of turf as smooth as a parlor carpet, but a fairly level plot of grass, which a scythe or a mowing-machine can soon put into order. ”

“ While it is most agreeable thus to consider hunting and fishing as constituting, for those especially endowed for their enjoyment, the most tempting of outdoor sports, it is easily apparent that there is a practical value to these sports as well as all other outdoor recreations, which rests upon a broader foundation. ”

“ In the fifth form, “winding up games,” the players join hands in a long line, and wind round and round one player at the end of the line, usually the tallest, who stands still until all are formed in a number of circles, something like a watch spring. They then unwind, sometimes running or dancing, in a serpentine fashion until all are again in straight line. These games probably refer to the custom of encircling trees, as an act of worship. They differ from the circle game in this way: The players in a circle game surround something or some one. ”

“ To most travelers who make the accustomed tour and seldom leave the beaten track, it is a surprise and regret that they see so little game, and they are apt to question its existence in any considerable numbers. In summer the game seldom frequents the geyser basins or places of popular resort, but wanders about undisturbed by the throng of pleasure-seekers. If one wishes to see game he must [Pg 253] leave the dusty roads and noisy stages, and travel by pack-train the unfrequented trails into the secluded portions of the Park. ”

“ But now the hunting woman and the hunting girl pervade the land, cross their male friends at their fences, and ride over them [331] when they lie submerged in ditches, with an airy cheerfulness which wins all hearts. In brief, it may be said that, in respect of outdoor exercises, whatever men and boys do women and girls do. They drive four-in-hand and tandem, they manipulate Motors, they skate and cycle, and fence and swim. ”

“ I would fix my rustic abode in a district where game is not preserved, and where I can have my sport without hindrance. Game will be less plentiful, but there will be more skill in finding it, and more pleasure in securing it. I remember the start of delight with which my father watched the rise of his first partridge and the rapture with which he found the hare he had sought all day long. ”