Page:Lacrosse- The National Game of Canada (New Edition).djvu/230

can be, absolutely permanent; that they fluctuate in accordance with the wavering destinies of the ball and the circumstances which grow out of these changes. To make any one or more positions permanent, would completely change the character, and destroy the uniqueness and beauty of the game. It would be like some games of chess, where a single pawn could checkmate, if it only had the power to move like a castle. It might be possible to have a perversion of Lacrosse, if two sides agreed to play with the above men permanently fixed, but a “Twelve” playing on such a stagnating principle, would soon have their fine theories scattered to the winds, while they might almost as well be spectators as participants, for all the support they could give their fielders. It is not usual for a man carrying the ball to get in the way of opposing checkers, if he can help it; and there would be less probability of it than now, if any certain men were “never to leave their places.” The result, too, would be to over-tax and break down the fielders, and give either the attack or the defence men—as the game was going—a wearisome repose, instead of that division of labor which alone can make a