298 MEMORIES OF MEN AND HORSES 



portmanteau scheme of words ; but I suppose the origin 

 of the trouble has passed out of memory, though Alice 

 Through the Looking Glass and the portmanteau words 

 never will. All the same, I pray the football authorities 

 to think and inquire into this question, which is really a 

 crying scandal to those who understand it, and let them 

 make the names of " Rugger " and " Soccer " " taboo " 

 for evermore. It may be difficult to do so without 

 some very serious and definite official pronouncement. 



There are other games which, curiously enough, the 

 march of time has revived. Croquet was a ridiculous game 

 in the period of John Leech's Punch illustrations, but 

 shortly after that time it was developed in scientific form 

 and I and a few others used to play it with the narrow 

 hoops, large mallets and very much the same setting of 

 hoops as at present. 



We attained to considerable scientific merit in laying 

 out, breaks and all that. Many a time did I in those 

 days the early seventies go round the ground in 

 one break, and, in practice, I once went three times 

 round, the ground not being quite so large as now, 

 but the hoops equally narrow. 



Then came a time when croquet was forgotten for 

 fifteen or twenty years, and suddenly it was revived. 



I watched some of the new champions playing and 

 could not detect that they had improved at all on the 

 old time. In fact, when I had a croquet ground laid out 

 at Cobham, I found that I could hold my own easily with 

 the new generation, and that they had not advanced one 

 iota in the science of the game as I knew it. The 

 trouble was that I could seldom find anyone to play a 

 serious game with me, and ultimately I took to playing 

 four ball games against myself, which often had remark- 



