THE PASSING OF THE PING-PONG CRAZE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2650, 28 December 1904, Page 39

THE PASSING OF THE PING-PONG CRAZE.

The craze of ping-pong (writes the London- correspondent of a contemporary) has died out. Two or three years ago everybody played ping-pong. No evening, party was complete without it. Some of the city

restaurants substituted ping-pong for billiards. There -were ping-pong tournaments at the Crystal Palace, the Aquarium, and such places ; and in hundreds of private houses ping-pong was played every evening after dinner. It was a trying game for elder y people, but the medical faculty pronounced it healthy exercise, and ping-pong became tho rage. Nowadays it is never mentioned. The ping-pong rooms at the Crystal Palace

are deserted ; the city restaurants no longer advertise the game as an antidote to their bills of fare. In many circles ping-pomg; has been killed by bridge and progressive whist or progressive eucihre. The death of pingpong is not mourned by householders. It vvus an intolerable nuisance in the dining or the drawing room. It led to the damaging- of many a carpet and the breakage of many an ornament. Hunting for lost balls

was not dignified amusement for players who had passed childhood ; and to elderly people fch© search under the table was often apoplectic. Nobody appears to grieve at tihe passing away of the game. Bridge still rules tlvo programme of amusements. Not to play bridge is to proclaim one's self an ignoramus. It haa supplanted whist, and women play the game more madly than men. At country houses during the shooting season bridge is

quite as attractive as shooting birds. The game has destroyed the taste for afterdinner music in the drawing room; and conversation is limited to bridge ana golf. Worst of all. bridge encourages a spirit of -gambling. There was a similar spirit at Bath, and Tunbridge, and Brighton in the Regency days, but it was limited to the bveks and the dandies and the men of wealth.