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 Captain Reid, are left rather obscure in his book. Players will find that this power of economizing privileges adds greatly to the interest of the game, and renders many a cunning plot and counter-plot necessary.