The Project Gutenberg EBook of Croquet, by Anonymous

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Title: Croquet
As played by the Newport Croquet Club

Author: Anonymous

Release Date: June 9, 2010 [EBook #32753]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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CROQUET.

AS PLAYED BY

THE NEWPORT CROQUET CLUB.

BY

ONE OF THE MEMBERS.

Sic Indus animo debet aliquando dari
Ad cogitandum melior ut redeat tibi.

PHOED., Lib. iii, Fab. 4.

NEW YORK:
SHELDON & COMPANY,

498 & 500 BROADWAY.

1865.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865, by

SHELDON & CO.,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District
of New York.

Stereotyped by
SMITH & MCDOUGAL,
84 Beekman-st.

Printed by
C.S. WESTCOTT & CO.,
79 John-st.

PREFACE.

The increasing popularity of Croquet, and the deficiencies of the
existing manuals of the game, have encouraged me to give this little
book to the public. The treatise of Captain Mayne Reid, to which the
introduction of croquet in this country is mainly due, is deficient in
system and arrangement, and affords no intelligible determination to
many of the cases I have instanced in illustration of the rules of the
game. The manuals published in this country are still more faulty. The
rules afford no solution to half of the ambiguous cases that arise in
ordinary play; and some are guilty of the strange error of allowing the
"Roquet Croquet" to every ball--a liberty totally at variance with the
fundamental principles of the game, and which in the hands of strong
players would prolong the contest indefinitely, make victory depend
upon a single chance hit, and reduce the opportunities for generalship
and combination to a minimum. I have dwelt at some length upon the
"right of declining," and the "theory of double points;" principles
which, though hinted at by Cap