FOOTNOTES:

"Of all the sarse thet I can call to mind,England doos make the most onpleasant kind.It's you're the sinner ollers, she's the saint;Whot's good's all English, all thet isn't, ain't.She is all thet's honest, honnable, an' fair.An' when the vartoos died they made her heir."

FOOTNOTES:[9]See,e.g., "Ad Familiares," 5, 18.[10]This was written just after President Cleveland's pronunciamento in regard to Venezuela, and thus long before the outbreak of the war with Spain.[11]This paragraph was written before the outbreak of the Spanish-American war; but the events of that struggle do not seem to me to call for serious modification of the opinion expressed above.[12]Sir George Campbell, in "Black and White in America."

[9]See,e.g., "Ad Familiares," 5, 18.

[10]This was written just after President Cleveland's pronunciamento in regard to Venezuela, and thus long before the outbreak of the war with Spain.

[11]This paragraph was written before the outbreak of the Spanish-American war; but the events of that struggle do not seem to me to call for serious modification of the opinion expressed above.

[12]Sir George Campbell, in "Black and White in America."

In face of the immense sums of money spent on all kinds of sport, the size and wealth of the athletic associations, the swollen salaries of baseball players, the prominence afforded to sporting events in the newspapers, the number of "world's records" made in the United States, and the tremendous excitement over inter-university football matches and international yacht-races, it may seem wanton to assert that the love of sport is not by any means so genuine or so universal in the United States as in Great Britain; and yet I am not at all sure that such a statement would not be absolutely true. By true "love of sport" I understand the enjoyment that arises from either practising or seeing others practise some form of skill-demanding amusement for its own sake, without question of pecuniary profit; and the true sport lover is not satisfied unless the best man wins, whether he be friend or foe. Sport ceases to be sport as soon as it is carried on as if it were war, where "all" is proverbially "fair." The excitement of gambling does not seem to me to be fairly covered by the phrase "love of sport," and no more does the mere desire to see one's university, state, or nation triumph over someone else's university, state, or nation. There are thousands of people who rejoice over or bewail the result of the Derby without thereby proving theirpossession of any right to the title of sportsman; there is no difference of quality between the speculator in grain and the speculator in horseflesh and jockeys' nerves. So, too, there are many thousands who yell for Yale in a football match who have no real sporting instinct whatever. Sport, to be sport, must jealously shun all attempts to make it a business; the more there is of the spirit of professionalism in any game or athletic exercise the less it deserves to be called a sport. A sport in the true sense of the word must be practised for fun or glory, not for dollars and cents; and the desire to win must be very strictly subordinated to the sense of honour and fair play. The book-making spirit has undoubtedly entered far too largely into many of the most characteristic of British sports, and I have no desire to palliate or excuse our national shortcomings in this or other respects. But the hard commercial spirit to which I have alluded seems to me to pervade American sport much more universally than it does the sport of England, and to form almost always a much larger factor in the interest excited by any contest.

This is very clearly shown by the way in which games are carried on at the universities of the two countries. Most members of an English college are members of some one or other of the various athletic associations connected with it, and it cannot be denied that the general interest in sport is both wide and keen. But it does not assume so "business-like" an air as it does in such a university as Yale or Princeton. Not nearly so much money is spent in the paraphernalia of the sport or in the process of training. The operation of turning a pleasure into a toil is not so consistently carried on.The members of the intercollegiate team do not obtain leave of absence from their college duties to train and practise in some remote corner of England as if they were prize-fighters or yearlings. "Gate-money" does not bulk so largely in the view; in fact, admission to many of the chief encounters is free. The atmosphere of mystery about the doings of the crew or team is not so sedulously cultivated. The men do not take defeat so hardly, or regard the loss of a match as a serious calamity in life. I have the authority of Mr. Caspar W. Whitney, the editor ofForest and Stream, and perhaps the foremost living writer on sport in the United States, for the statement that members of a defeated football team in America will sometimes throw themselves on their faces on the turf and weep (see his "Sporting Pilgrimage," Chapter IV., pp. 94, 95).[13]It was an American orator who proposed the toast: "My country—right or wrong, my country;" and there is some reason to fear that American college athletes are tempted to adapt this in the form "Let uswin, by fair means or foul." I should hesitate to suggest this were it not that the evidence on which I do so was supplied from American sources. Thus, one American friend of mine told me he heard a member of a leading university football team say to one of his colleagues: "You try to knock out A.B. this bout; I've been warned once." Tactics of this kind are freely alleged against our professional players of association football; but it may safely be asserted that no such sentence could issue from the lips of a member of the Oxford or Cambridge university teams.

Mr. E.J. Brown, Track Captain of the University of California, asserted, on his return from a visit to the Eastern States, that Harvard was the only Eastern university in which the members of the athletic teams were allbonâ fidestudents. This is doubtless a very exaggerated statement, but it would seem to indicate which way the wind blows. The entire American tendency is to take amusement too seriously, too strenuously. They do not allow sport to take care of itself. "It runs to rhetoric and interviews." All good contestants become "representatives of the American people." One serious effect of the way in which the necessity of winning or "making records" is constantly held up as theraison d'êtreof athletic sports is that it suggests to the ordinary student, who has no hopes of brilliant success in athletics, that moderate exercise is contemptible, and that he need do nothing to keep up his bodily vigour. Thus, Dr. Birkbeck Hill found that the proportion of students who took part in some athletic sport was distinctly less at Harvard than at Oxford. Nor could I ascertain that nearly so large a proportion of the adult population themselves played games or followed athletics of any kind as in England. I should say, speaking roughly, that the end of his university career or his first year in responsible business corresponded practically for the ordinary American to the forty-fifth year of the ordinary Englishman,i.e., after this time he would either entirely or partially give up his own active participation in outdoor exercises. Of course there are thousands of exceptions on both sides; but the general rule remains true. The average American professional or business man does not play baseball as his English cousindoes cricket. He goes in his thousands to see baseball matches, and takes a very keen and vociferous interest in their progress; but he himself has probably not handled a club since he left college. No doubt this contrast is gradually diminishing, and such games as lawn tennis and golf have made it practically a vanishing quantity in the North-eastern States; but as one goes West one cannot but feel that baseball and other sports, like dancing in China, are almost wholly in the hands of paid performers.

The national games of cricket and baseball serve very well to illustrate this, as well as other contrasts in the pastimes of the two nations. In cricket the line between the amateur and the professional has hitherto been very clearly drawn; and Englishmen are apt to believe that there is something elevating in the very nature of the game which makes it shed scandals as a duck's back sheds water. The American view is, perhaps, rather that cricket is so slow a game that there is little scope for betting, with all its attendant excitement and evils. They point to the fact that the staid city of Philadelphia is the only part of the United States in which cricket flourishes; and, if in a boasting mood, they may claim with justice that it has been cultivated there in a way that shows that it is not lack of ability to shine in it that makes most Americans indifferent to the game. A first-class match takes three days to play, and even a match between two teams of small boys requires a long half-holiday. Hence the game is largely practised by the members of the leisure class. The grounds on which it is played are covered with the greenest and best-kept of turf, and are often amid the most lovely surroundings. The season at which the game is played is summer, sothat looking on is warm and comfortable. There is comparatively little chance of serious accident; and the absence of personal contact of player with player removes the prime cause of quarrelling and ill-feeling. Hence ladies feel that they may frequent cricket matches in their daintiest summer frocks and without dread of witnessing any painful accident or unseemly scuffle. The costumes of the players are varied, appropriate, and tasteful, and the arrangement of the fielders is very picturesque.

Baseball, on the other hand (which,pace, my American friends, is simply glorified rounders), with the exception of school and college teams, is almost wholly practised by professional players; and the place of the county cricket matches is taken by the games between the various cities represented in the National League, in which the amateur is severely absent. The dress, with a long-sleeved semmet appearing below a short-sleeved jersey, is very ugly, and gives a sort of ruffianly look to a "nine" which it might be free from in another costume. The ground is theoretically grass, but practically (often, at least) hard-trodden earth or mud. A match is finished in about one hour and a half. In running for base a player has often to throw himself on his face, and thereby covers himself with dust or mud. The spectators have each paid a sum varying from 1s. or 2s. to 8s. or even 10s. for admission, and are keenly excited in the contest; while their yells, and hoots, and slangy chaff are very different to the decorous applause of the cricket field, and rather recall an association football crowd in the Midlands. As a rule not much sympathy or courtesy is extended to the visiting team, and the duties of anumpire are sometimes accompanied by real danger.[14]Several features of the play seem distinctly unsportsmanlike. Thus, it is the regular duty of one of the batting team, when not in himself, to try to "rattle" the pitcher or fielder by yells and shouts just as he is about to "pitch" or "catch" or "touch." It is not considered dishonourable for one of the waiting strikers to pretend to be the player really at a base and run from base to base just outside the real line so as to confuse the fielders. On the other hand the game is rapid, full of excitement and variety, and susceptible of infinite development of skill. The accuracy with which a long field will throw to base might turn an English long-leg green with envy; and the way in which an expert pitcher will make a ball deflectin the air, either up or down, to the right or left, must be seen to be believed. A really skilful pitcher is said to be able to throw a ball in such a way that it will go straight to within a foot of a tree,turn out for the tree, and resume its original course on the other side of it!

The football match between Yale and Princeton on Thanksgiving Day (last Thursday in November) may, perhaps, be said to hold the place in public estimation in America that the Oxford and Cambridge boat-race does in England. In spite of the inclement season, spectators of either sex turn out in their thousands; and the scene, except that furs are substituted for summer frocks, easily stands comparison with the Eton and Harrow day at Lord's. The field is surrounded in the same way with carriages and drags, on which the colours of therival teams are profusely displayed; and there are the same merry coach-top luncheons, the same serried files of noisy partisans, and the same general air of festivity, while the final touch is given by the fact that a brilliant sun is not rarer in America in November than it is in England in June. The American game of football is a developed form of the Rugby game; but is, perhaps, not nearer it than baseball is to rounders. It is played by eleven a side. American judges think that neither Rugby nor Association football approaches the American game either in skill or in demand on the player's physical endurance. This may be so: in fact, so far as my very inexpert point of view goes I should say that it is so. Undoubtedly the American teams go through a much more prolonged and rigid system of training, and their scheme of tactics, codes of signals, and sharp devices of all kinds are much more complicated. "Tackling" is probably reduced to a finer art than in England. Mr. Whitney, a most competent and impartial observer, does not think that our system of "passing" would be possible with American tacklers. Whether all this makes a bettergameis a very different question, and one that I should be disposed to answer in the negative. It is a more serious business, just as a duelà outranceis a more serious business than a fencing match; but it is not so interesting to look at and does not seem to afford the players so muchfun. There is little running with the ball, almost no dropping or punting, and few free kicks. The game between Princeton and Yale which I, shivering, saw from the top of a drag in 1891, seemed like one prolonged, though rather loose, scrimmage; and the spectators fairly yelled for joy when theysaw the ball, which happened on an average about once every ten or fifteen minutes. Americans have to gain five yards for every three "downs" or else lose possession of the ball; and hence the field is marked off by five-yard lines all the way from goal to goal. American writers acknowledge that the English Rugby men are much better kickers than the American players, and that it is now seldom that the punter in America gets a fair chance to show his skill. There are many tiresome waits in the American game; and the practice of "interference," though certainly managed with wonderful skill, can never seem quite fair to one brought upon the English notions of "off-side." The concerted cheering of the students of each university, led by a regular fugle-man, marking time with voice and arms, seems odd to the spectator accustomed to the sparse, spontaneous, and independent applause of an English crowd.

An American football player in full armour resembles a deep-sea diver or a Roman retiarius more than anything else. The dress itself consists of thickly padded knickerbockers, jersey, canvas jacket, very heavy boots, and very thick stockings. The player then farther protects himself by shin guards, shoulder caps, ankle and knee supporters, and wristbands. The apparatus on his head is fearful and wonderful to behold, including a rubber mouthpiece, a nose mask, padded ear guards, and a curious headpiece made of steel springs, leather straps, and India rubber. It is obvious that a man in this cumbersome attire cannot move so quickly as an English player clad simply in jersey, short breeches, boots, and stockings; and I question very much whether—slugging apart—the American assumption that the scienceof Yale would simply overwhelm the more elementary play of an English university is entirely justified. Anyone who has seen an American team in this curious paraphernalia can well understand the shudder of apprehension that shakes an American spectator the first time he sees an English team take the field with bare knees.

Certainly the spirit and temper with which football is played in the United States would seem to indicate that the over-elaborate way in which it has been handled has not been favourable to a true ideal of manly sport. On this point I shall not rely on my own observation, but on the statements of Americans themselves, beginning with the semi-jocular assertion, which largely belongs to the order of true words spoken in jest, that "in old English football you kicked the ball; in modern English football you kick the man when you can't kick the ball; in American football you kick the ball when you can't kick the man." In Georgia, Indiana, Nebraska, and possibly some other States, bills to prohibit football have actually been introduced in the State Legislatures within the past few years. The following sentences are taken from an article in theNation(New York), referring to the Harvard and Yale game of 1894:

The game on Saturday at Springfield between the two great teams of Harvard and Yale was by the testimony—unanimous, as far as our knowledge goes—of spectators and newspapers the most brutal ever witnessed in the United States. There are few members of either university—we trust there are none—who have not hung their heads for shame in talking over it, or thinking of it.In the first place, we respectfully ask the governing body of all colleges what they have to say for a game betweenyouths presumably engaged in the cultivation of the liberal arts which needs among its preliminaries a supply on the field of litters and surgeons? Such preparations are not only brutal, but brutalising. How any spectator, especially any woman, can witness them without a shudder, so distinctly do they recall the duelling field and the prize ring, we are unable to understand. But that they are necessary and proper under the circumstances the result showed. There were actually seven casualties among twenty-two men who began the game. This is nearly 33 per cent. of the combatants—a larger proportion than among the Federals at Cold Harbor (the bloodiest battle of modern times), and much larger than at Waterloo or at Gravelotte. What has American culture and civilisation to say to this mode of training youth? "Brewer was so badly injured that he had to be taken off the field crying with mortification." Wright, captain of the Yale men, jumped on him with both knees, breaking his collar bone. Beard was next turned over to the doctors. Hallowell had his nose broken. Murphy was soon badly injured and taken off the field on a stretcher unconscious, with concussion of the brain. Butterworth, who is said nearly to have lost an eye, soon followed. Add that there was a great deal of "slugging"—that is, striking with the fist and kicking—which was not punished by the umpires, though two men were ruled out for it.It may be laid down as a sound rule among civilised people that games which may be won by disabling your adversary, or wearing out his strength, or killing him, ought to be prohibited, at all events among its youth. Swiftness of foot, skill and agility, quickness of sight, and cunning of hands, are things to be encouraged in education.The use of brute force against an unequally matched antagonist, on the other hand, is one of the most debauching influences to which a young man can be exposed. The hurling of masses of highly trained athletes against one another with intent to overcome by mere weight or kicking or cuffing, without the possibility of the rigid superintendence which the referee exercises in the prize ring, cannot fail to blunt the sensibilities of young men, stimulate their bad passions, and drown their sense of fairness. When this is done in the sight of thousands, under the stimulation of their frantic cheers and encouragement, and in full view of the stretchers which carry their fellows from the field, for aught they know disabled for life, how, in the name of common sense, does it differ in moral influence from the Roman arena?

In the first place, we respectfully ask the governing body of all colleges what they have to say for a game betweenyouths presumably engaged in the cultivation of the liberal arts which needs among its preliminaries a supply on the field of litters and surgeons? Such preparations are not only brutal, but brutalising. How any spectator, especially any woman, can witness them without a shudder, so distinctly do they recall the duelling field and the prize ring, we are unable to understand. But that they are necessary and proper under the circumstances the result showed. There were actually seven casualties among twenty-two men who began the game. This is nearly 33 per cent. of the combatants—a larger proportion than among the Federals at Cold Harbor (the bloodiest battle of modern times), and much larger than at Waterloo or at Gravelotte. What has American culture and civilisation to say to this mode of training youth? "Brewer was so badly injured that he had to be taken off the field crying with mortification." Wright, captain of the Yale men, jumped on him with both knees, breaking his collar bone. Beard was next turned over to the doctors. Hallowell had his nose broken. Murphy was soon badly injured and taken off the field on a stretcher unconscious, with concussion of the brain. Butterworth, who is said nearly to have lost an eye, soon followed. Add that there was a great deal of "slugging"—that is, striking with the fist and kicking—which was not punished by the umpires, though two men were ruled out for it.

It may be laid down as a sound rule among civilised people that games which may be won by disabling your adversary, or wearing out his strength, or killing him, ought to be prohibited, at all events among its youth. Swiftness of foot, skill and agility, quickness of sight, and cunning of hands, are things to be encouraged in education.The use of brute force against an unequally matched antagonist, on the other hand, is one of the most debauching influences to which a young man can be exposed. The hurling of masses of highly trained athletes against one another with intent to overcome by mere weight or kicking or cuffing, without the possibility of the rigid superintendence which the referee exercises in the prize ring, cannot fail to blunt the sensibilities of young men, stimulate their bad passions, and drown their sense of fairness. When this is done in the sight of thousands, under the stimulation of their frantic cheers and encouragement, and in full view of the stretchers which carry their fellows from the field, for aught they know disabled for life, how, in the name of common sense, does it differ in moral influence from the Roman arena?

Now, the point in the above notice is that it is written of "gentlemen"—of university men. It is to be feared that very similar charges might be brought against some of the professionals of our association teams: but our amateurs are practically exempt from any such accusation. The climax of the whole thing is the statement by a professor of a well-known university, that a captain of one of the great football teams declared in a class prayer-meeting "that the great success of the team the previous season was in his opinion due to the fact that among the team and substitutes there were so many praying men." The true friends of sport in the United States must wish that the football mania may soon disappear in its present form; and the Harvard authorities are to be warmly congratulated on the manly stand they have taken against the evil. And it is to be devoutly hoped that no president of acollege in the future will ever, as one did in 1894, congratulate his students on the fact "that their progress and success in study during the term just finished had beenfully equalto their success in intercollegiate athletics and football!".[15]

I have, however, no desire to pose as the British Pharisee, and I am aware that, though we make the better showing in this instance, there are others in which our record is at least as bad. The following paragraph is taken from theField(December 7th, 1895):

Highclere.—As various incorrect reports have been published of the shooting at Highclere last week, Lord Carnarvon has desired me to forward the enclosed particulars of the game shot on three days: November 26, 27, and 29, James McCraw (13, Berkeley-square, w.). November 26, Grotto (Brooks) Beat, 5 partridges, 1,160 pheasants, 42 hares, 2,362 rabbits, 7 various; total, 3,576. November 27, Highclere Wood (Cross) Beat, 5 partridges, 1,700 pheasants, 1 hare, 1,702 rabbits, 4 woodcock, 16 various; total, 3,428. November 29, Beeches (Cross) Beat, 6 partridges, 2,811 pheasants, 969 rabbits, 2 wild fowl, 15 various; total, 3,803. Grand total: 16 partridges, 5,671 pheasants, 43 hares, 5,033 rabbits, 4 woodcock, 2 wildfowl, 38 various; total, 10,807. The shooters on the first two days were Prince Victor Duleep Singh, Prince Frederick Duleep Singh, Lord de Grey, Lord Ashburton, Lord Carnarvon, and Mr. Chaplin. On November 29 Mr. Rutherford took the place of Mr. Chaplin.

A little calculation will show that each of the six gentlemen mentioned in the paragraph must have killed one head of game every minute or two. This makes it impossible that there could have been many misses. This in turn makes it certain that the pheasants in the bag must have been nearly as tame as barndoor fowl. The shooting, then, must have been one long drawn-out massacre of semi-tame animals, with hardly a breathing interval. I confess such a record seems to me as absolutely devoid of sport and as full of brutality as the worst slugging match between Princeton and Yale; and it, moreover, lacks the element of physical courage which is certainly necessary in the football match. Besides, the English sinners are grown men and members of the class which is supposed to set the pattern for the rest of the nation; the university footballers, in spite of their own sense of importance, are after all raw youths, to whom reason does not altogether forbid us to hope that riper years may bring more sense and more true manliness.

Two of the most popular outdoor amusements in the United States are driving and sailing. I do not know how far statistics would bear me out, but one certainly gets the impression that more people keep horses for pleasure in America than in England. Horses are comparatively cheap, and their keep is often lower than with us. The light buggies must cost less than the moresubstantial carriages of England. Hence, if a man is so fond of driving as to be willing to be his own coachman and groom, the keeping of a horse and shay is not very ruinous, especially in the country or smaller towns. As soon as the element of wages enters into the question the result is very different: carriage-hire is usually twice as high as in England and often more. However that may be, it is certainly very striking to see the immense number of one-horse "teams" that turn out for an afternoon or evening spin in the parks and suburban roads of places like New York, Boston, and Chicago. Many of these teams are of a plainness, not to say shabbiness, which would make an English owner too shamefaced to exhibit them in public. The fact that the owner is his own stableman is often indicated by the ungroomed coat of his horse, and by the month-old mud on his wheels. The horse, however, can generally do a bit of smart trotting, and his owner evidently enjoys his speed and grit. The buggies, unsubstantial as they look, are comfortable enough when one is seated; but the access, between, through, and over the wheels, is unpleasantly suggestive for the nervous. So fond are the Americans of driving that they evidently look upon it as a form of active exercise for themselves as well as for their nags. One man said to me: "I am really getting too stout; I must start a buggy."

I am almost ashamed to avow that I spent five years in the United States without seeing a trotting-race, though this was owing to no lack of desire. The only remark that I shall, therefore, venture to make about this form of sport is that the American claim that it has a more practical bearing than the English form ofhorse-racing seems justified. It is alleged indeed that the English "running" races are of immense importance in keeping up the breed of horses; but it may well be open to question whether the same end could not be better attained by very different means. What is generally wanted in a horse is draught power and ability to trot well and far. It is not clear to the layman that a flying machine that can do a mile in a minute and a half is the ideal parent for this form of horse. On the other hand, the famous trotting-horses of America are just the kind of animal that is wanted for the ordinary uses of life. Moreover, the trot is the civilised or artificial gait as opposed to the wild and natural gallop. There are 1,500 trotting-tracks in the United States, owned by as many associations, besides those at all county and State fairs as well as many private tracks at brood-farms and elsewhere. Stakes, purses, and added moneys amount to more than $3,000,000 annually; and the capital invested in horses, tracks, stables, farms, etc., is enormous. The tracks are level, with start and finish directly in front of the grand stand, and are either one mile or one-half mile in length. They are always of earth, and are usually elliptical in shape, though the "kite-shaped track" was for a time popular on account of its increased speed. In this there is one straight stretch of one-third mile, then a wide turn of one-third mile, and then a straight run of one-third mile back to the start and finish. The horses are driven in two-wheeled "sulkies" of little weight, and the handicapping is exclusively by time-classes. Records of every race are kept by two national associations. Horses that have never trotted a mile in less than two minutes and fortyseconds are in one class; those that have never beaten 2.35 in another; those that have never beaten 2.30 in a third; and so on down to 2.05, which has been beaten but a dozen times. Races are always run in heats, and the winner must win three heats. With a dozen entries (or even six or eight, the more usual number) a race may thus occupy an entire afternoon, and require many heats before a decision is reached. Betting is common at every meeting, but is not so prominent as at running tracks.

The record for fast trotting is held at present by Mr. Morris Jones' mare "Alix," which trotted a mile in two minutes three and three-quarters seconds at Galesburg in 1894. Turfmen confidently expect that a mile will soon be trotted in two minutes. The two-minute mark was attained in 1897 by apacinghorse.

Sailing is tremendously popular at all American seaside resorts; and lolling over the ropes of a "cat-boat" is another form of active exercise that finds innumerable votaries. Rowing is probably practised in the older States with as much zest as in Great Britain, and the fresh-water facilities are perhaps better. Except as a means to an end, however, this mechanical form of sport has never appealed to me. The more nearly a man can approximate to a triple-expansion engine the better oarsman he is; no machine can be imagined that could play cricket, golf, or tennis.

The recent development of golf—perhaps the finest of all games—both in England and America might give rise to a whole series of reflections on the curious vicissitudes of games and the mysterious reasons of their development. Golf has been played universally inScotland for hundreds of years, right under the noses of Englishmen; yet it is just about thirty years ago that (except Blackheath) the first golf-club was established south of the Tweed, and the present craze for it is of the most recent origin (1885 or so). Yet of the eight hundred golf-clubs of the United Kingdom about four hundred are in England. The Scots of Canada have played golf for many years, but the practice of the game in the United States may be dated from the establishment of the St. Andrew's Club at Yonkers in 1888. Since then the game has been taken up with considerable enthusiasm at many centres, and it is estimated that there are now at least forty thousand American golfers. There is, perhaps, no game that requires more patience to acquire satisfactorily than golf, and the preliminary steps cannot be gobbled. It is therefore doubtful whether the game will ever become extensively popular in a country with so much nervous electricity in the air. I heartily wish that this half-prophecy may prove utterly mistaken, for no better relief to overcharged nerves and wearied brains has ever been devised than a well-matched "twosome" or the more social "foursome;" and the fact that golf gently exercisesallthe muscles of the body and can be played atallages from eight to eighty gives it a unique place among outdoor games. The skill already attained by the best American players is simply marvellous; and it seems by no means beyond the bounds of possibility that the open champion of (say) the year 1902 may not have been trained on American soil. The natural impatience of the active-minded American makes him at present very apt to neglect the etiquette of the game. The chance of being "driveninto" is much larger on the west side of the Atlantic than on the conservative greens of Scotland; and it seems almost impossible to make Brother Jonathan "replace that divot." I have seen three different parties holing out at the same time on the same putting green. In one open handicap tournament I took part in near Boston the scanty supply of caddies was monopolized by the members of the club holding the tournament, and strangers, who had never seen the course, were allowed to go round alone and carrying their own clubs. On another occasion a friend and myself played in a foursome handicap tournament and were informed afterwards that the handicaps were yet to be arranged! As the match was decided in our favour it would be ungracious to complain of this irregularity. Those little infringements of etiquette are, after all, mere details, and will undoubtedly become less and less frequent before the growing knowledge and love of the game.

Lacrosse, perhaps the most perspicuous and fascinating of all games to the impartial spectator, is, of course, chiefly played in Canada, but there is a Lacrosse League in the Atlantic cities of the United States. The visitor to Canada should certainly make a point of seeing a good exposition of this most agile and graceful game, which is seen at its best in Montreal, Toronto, or Ottawa. Unfortunately it seems to be most trying to the temper, and I have more than once seen players in representative matches neglect the game to indulge in a bout of angry quarter-staff with their opponents until forcibly stopped by the umpires, while the spectators also interfere occasionally in the most disgraceful manner. Another drawback is the interval of tenminutes between each game of the match, even when the game has taken only two minutes to play. This absurd rule has been promptly discarded by the English Lacrosse Clubs, and should certainly be modified in Canada also.

Lawn tennis is now played almost everywhere in the United States, and its best exponents, such as Larned and Wrenn, have attained all but—if not quite—English championship form. The annual contest for the championship of America, held at Newport in August, is one of the prettiest sporting scenes on the continent. Polo and court tennis also have their headquarters at Newport. Hunting, shooting, and fishing are, of course, immensely popular (at least the last two) in the United States, but lie practically beyond the pale of my experience.

Bowling or ten-pins is a favourite winter amusement of both sexes, and occupies a far more exalted position than the English skittles. The alleys, attached to most gymnasia and athletic-club buildings, are often fitted up with great neatness and comfort; and even the fashionable belle does not disdain her "bowling-club" evening, where she meets a dozen or two of the young men and maidens of her acquaintance. Regular meetings take place between the teams of various athletic associations, records are made and chronicled, and championships decided. If the game could be naturalised in England under the same conditions as in America, our young people would find it a most admirable opportunity for healthy exercise in the long dark evenings of winter.

Track athletics (running, jumping, etc.) occupy verymuch the same position in the United States as in England; and outside the university sphere the same abuses of the word "amateur" and the same instances of selling prizes and betting prevail. Mr. Caspar Whitney says that "amateur athletics are absolutely in danger of being exterminated in the United States if something is not done to cleanse them." The evils are said to be greatest in the middle and far West. There are about a score of important athletic clubs in fifteen of the largest cities of the United States, with a membership of nearly 25,000; and many of these possess handsome clubhouses, combining the social accommodations of the Carlton or Reform with the sporting facilities of Queen's. The Country Club is another American institution which may be mentioned in this connection. It consists of a comfortably and elegantly fitted-up clubhouse, within easy driving distance of a large city, and surrounded by facilities for tennis, racquets, golf, polo, baseball, racing, etc. So far it has kept clear of the degrading sport of pigeon shooting.

Training is carried out more thoroughly and consistently than in England, and many if not most of the "records" are held in America. The visits paid to the United States by athletic teams of the L.A.C. and Cambridge University opened the eyes of Englishmen to what Americans could do, the latter winning seventeen out of twenty events and making several world's records. Indeed, there is almost too much of a craze to make records, whereas the real sport is to beat a competitor, not to hang round a course till the weather or other conditions make "record-making" probable. A feature of American athletic meetings with which weare unfamiliar in England is the short sprinting-races, sometimes for as small a distance as fifteen yards.

Bicycling also is exposed, as a public sport, to the same reproaches on both sides of the Atlantic. The bad roads of America prevented the spread of wheeling so long as the old high bicycle was the type, but the practice has assumed enormous proportions since the invention of the pneumatic-tired "safety." The League of American Wheelmen has done much to improve the country roads. The lady's bicycle was invented in the United States, and there are, perhaps, more lady riders in proportion in that country than in any other. As evidence of the rapidity with which things move in America it may be mentioned that when I quitted Boston in 1893 not a single "society" lady so far as I could hear had deigned to touch the wheel; now (1898) I understand that even a house in Beacon Street and a lot in Mt. Auburn Cemetery are not enough to give the guinea-stamp of rank unless at least one member of the family is an expert wheelwoman. An amazing instance of the receptivity and adaptability of the American attitude is seen in the fact that the outsides of the tramway-cars in at least one Western city are fitted with hooks for bicycles, so that the cyclist is saved the unpleasant, jolting ride over stone pavements before reaching suburban joys.

FOOTNOTES:[13]I wish to confess my obligation to this interesting book for much help in writing the present chapter.[14]A match played in no less aristocratic a place than Newport on Sept. 2, 1897, between the local team and a club from Brockton, ended in a general scrimmage, in which even women joined in the cry of "Kill the umpire!"[15]It is, perhaps, only fair to quote on the other side the opinion of Mr. Rudolf Lehmann, the well-known English rowing coach, who witnessed the match between Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania in 1897. He writes in the LondonNews: "I have never seen a finer game played with a manlier spirit. The quickness and the precision of the players were marvellous.... The game as I saw it, though it was violent and rough, was never brutal. Indeed, I cannot hope to see a finer exhibition of courage, strength, and manly endurance, without a trace of meanness."And to Mr. Lehmann's voice may be added that of a "Mother of Nine Sons," who wrote to the BostonEvening Transcriptin 1897, speaking warmly of the advantages of football in the formation of habits of self-control and submission to authority.

[13]I wish to confess my obligation to this interesting book for much help in writing the present chapter.

[14]A match played in no less aristocratic a place than Newport on Sept. 2, 1897, between the local team and a club from Brockton, ended in a general scrimmage, in which even women joined in the cry of "Kill the umpire!"

[15]It is, perhaps, only fair to quote on the other side the opinion of Mr. Rudolf Lehmann, the well-known English rowing coach, who witnessed the match between Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania in 1897. He writes in the LondonNews: "I have never seen a finer game played with a manlier spirit. The quickness and the precision of the players were marvellous.... The game as I saw it, though it was violent and rough, was never brutal. Indeed, I cannot hope to see a finer exhibition of courage, strength, and manly endurance, without a trace of meanness."And to Mr. Lehmann's voice may be added that of a "Mother of Nine Sons," who wrote to the BostonEvening Transcriptin 1897, speaking warmly of the advantages of football in the formation of habits of self-control and submission to authority.

And to Mr. Lehmann's voice may be added that of a "Mother of Nine Sons," who wrote to the BostonEvening Transcriptin 1897, speaking warmly of the advantages of football in the formation of habits of self-control and submission to authority.

"A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections." So wrote George Eliot in "Daniel Deronda." And the truth of the apothegm may account for much of the friction in the intercourse of John Bull and Brother Jonathan. For, undoubtedly, there is a wide difference between the humour of the Englishman and the humour of the American. John Bull's downrightness appears in his jests also. His jokes must be unmistakable; he wants none of your quips masquerading as serious observations. A mere twinkle of the eye is not for him a sufficient illumination between the serious and the comic. "Those animals are horses," Artemus Ward used to say in showing his panorama. "I know they are—because my artist says so. I had the picture two years before I discovered the fact. The artist came to me about six months ago and said, 'It is useless to disguise it from you any longer—they are horses.'"[16]This is the form of introduction that John Bull prefers for his witticisms. He will welcome a joke as hospitably as avisitor, if only the credentials of the one as of the other are unimpeachable.

Now the American does not wish his joke underlined like an urgent parliamentary whip. He wants something left to his imagination; he wants to be tickled by the feeling that it requires a keen eye to see the point; he may, in a word, like his champagne sweet, but he wants his humour dry. His telephone girls halloo, but his jokes don't. In this he resembles the Scotsman much more than the Englishman; and both European foreigners and the Americans themselves seem aware of this. Thus, Max O'Rell writes:

De tous les citoyens duRoyaumeplus ou moinsUnil'ami Donald est le plus fini, le plus solide, le plus positif, le plus persévérant, le plus laborieux, et le plus spirituel.Le plus spirituel! voilà un grand mot de lâché. Oui, le plus spirituel, n'en déplaise a l'ombre de Sydney Smith.... J'espère bien prouver, par quelques anecdotes, que Donald a de l'esprit, de l'esprit de bon aloi, d'humour surtout, de cet humour fin subtil, qui passerait à travers la têted'un Cockneysans y laisser la moindre trace, sans y faire la moindre impression.

De tous les citoyens duRoyaumeplus ou moinsUnil'ami Donald est le plus fini, le plus solide, le plus positif, le plus persévérant, le plus laborieux, et le plus spirituel.

Le plus spirituel! voilà un grand mot de lâché. Oui, le plus spirituel, n'en déplaise a l'ombre de Sydney Smith.... J'espère bien prouver, par quelques anecdotes, que Donald a de l'esprit, de l'esprit de bon aloi, d'humour surtout, de cet humour fin subtil, qui passerait à travers la têted'un Cockneysans y laisser la moindre trace, sans y faire la moindre impression.

The testimony of the American is equally explicit.

The following dialogue, quoted from memory, appeared some time since in one of the best American comic journals:

Tomkyns(of London).—I say, Vanarsdale, I told such a good joke, don't you know, to MacPherson, and he didn't laugh a bit! I suppose that's because he's a Scotsman?Vanarsdale(of New York).—I don't know; I think it's more likely that it's because you are an Englishman!

Tomkyns(of London).—I say, Vanarsdale, I told such a good joke, don't you know, to MacPherson, and he didn't laugh a bit! I suppose that's because he's a Scotsman?

Vanarsdale(of New York).—I don't know; I think it's more likely that it's because you are an Englishman!

An English audience is usually much slower than an American or Scottish one to take up a joke that is anything less than obvious. I heard Max O'Rell deliver one of his witty orations in London. The audience was good humored, entirely with the lecturer, and only too ready to laugh. But if his joke was the least bit subtle, the least bit less apparent than usual, it was extraordinary how the laughter hung fire. There would be an appreciable interval of silence; then, perhaps, a solitary laugh in a corner of the gallery; then a sort of platoon fire in different parts of the house; and, finally, a simultaneous roar. So, when Mr. John Morley, in his admirable lecture on the Carlyle centenary celebration (Dec. 5, 1895), quoted Carlyle's saying about Sterling: "We talked about this thing and that—except in opinion not disagreeing," there was a lapse of half-a-minute before the audience realised that the saying had a humorous turn. In an American audience, and I believe also in a Scottish one, the report would have been simultaneous with the flash.

Perhaps the Americans themselves are just a little too sure of their superiority to the English in point of humour, and indeed they often carry their witticisms on the supposed English "obtuseness" to a point at which exaggeration ceases to be funny. It is certainly not every American who scoffs at English wit that is entitled to do so. There are dullards in the United States as well as elsewhere; and nothing can well be more ghastly than American humour run into the ground. On the other hand their sense of loyalty to humour makes them much more free in using it at their own expense; and some of their stories show themselves up in the light usually reserved for John Bull. I remember,unpatriotically, telling a stock story (to illustrate the English slowness to take a joke) to an American writer whose pictures of New England life are as full of a delicate sense of humour as they are of real and simple pathos. It was, perhaps, the tale of the London bookseller who referred to his own coiffure the American's remark apropos of the two-volume English edition of a well-known series of "Walks in London"—"Ah, I see you part yourHarein the middle." Whatever it was, my hearer at once capped it by the reply of a Boston girl to her narration of the following anecdote: A railway conductor, on his way through the cars to collect and check the tickets, noticed a small hair-trunk lying in the forbidden central gangway, and told the old farmer to whom it apparently belonged that it must be moved from there at once. On a second round he found the trunk still in the passage, reiterated his instructions more emphatically, and passed on without listening to the attempted explanations of the farmer. On his third round he cried: "Now, I gave you fair warning; here goes;" and tipped the trunk overboard. Then, at last, the slow-moving farmer found utterance and exclaimed: "All right! the trunk is none o' mine!" To which the Boston girl: "Well, whose trunk was it?" We agreed,nem. con., that this was indeedAnglis ipsis Anglior.

These remarks as to the comparative merits of English and American humour must be understood as referring to the average man in each case—the "Man on the Cars," as our cousins have it. It would be a very different position, and one hardly tenable, to maintain that the land of Mark Twain has produced greater literary humoriststhan the land of Charles Lamb. In the matter of comic papers it may also be doubted, even by those who most appreciate American humour, whether England has altogether the worst of it. It is the fashion in the States to speak of "poor oldPunch," and to affect astonishment at seeing in its "senile pages" anything that they have to admit to be funny. Doubtless a great deal of very laborious and vapid jesting goes on in the pages of thedoyenof English comic weeklies; but at its bestPunchis hard to beat, and its humours have often a literary quality such as is seldom met with in an American journal of the same kind. No American paper can even remotely claim to have added so much to the gaiety of nations as the pages that can number names like Leech and Thackeray, Douglas Jerrold and Tom Hood, Burnand and Charles Keene, Du Maurier and Tenniel, Linley Sambourne and the author of "Vice Versâ," among its contributors past and present. And besides—and the claim is a proud one—Punchstill remains the only comic paper of importance that is always a perfect gentleman—a gentleman who knows how to behave both in the smoking-room and the drawing-room, who knows when a jest oversteps the boundary line of coarseness, who realises that a laugh can sometimes be too dearly won.Punchis certainly a comic journal of which the English have every reason to be proud; but if we had to name the paper most typical of the English taste in humour we should, perhaps, be shamefacedly compelled to turn toAlly Sloper.

The best American comic paper isLife, which is modelled on the lines of theMünchener Fliegende Blätter, perhaps the funniest and most mirth-provokingof all professedly humorous weeklies. Among the most attractive features are the graceful and dignified drawings of Mr. Charles Dana Gibson, who has in its pages done for American society what Mr. Du Maurier has done for England by his scenes inPunch; the sketches of F.G. Attwood and S.W. Van Schaick; and the clever verses of M.E.W. The dryness, the smart exaggeration, the point, the unexpectedness of American humour are all often admirably represented in its pages; and the faults and foibles of contemporary society are touched off with an inimitable delicacy of satire both in pencil and pen work.Life, likePunch, has also its more serious side; and, if it has never produced a "Song of the Shirt," it earns our warm admiration for its steadfast championing of worthy causes, its severe and trenchant attacks on rampant evils, and its eloquent tributes to men who have deserved well of the country. On the other hand, it not unfrequently publishes jokes the birth of which considerably antedates that of the United States itself; and it sometimes descends to a level of trifling flatness and vapidity which no English paper of the kind can hope to equal. It is hard—for a British critic at any rate—to see any perennial interest in the long series of highly exaggerated drawings and jests referring to the gutter children of New York, a series in which the same threadbaremotifsare constantly recurring under the thinnest of disguises. And occasionally—very occasionally—there is a touch of coarseness in the drawings ofLifewhich suggests the worst features of its German prototype rather than anything it has borrowed from England.

Among the political comic journals of America mentionmay be made ofPuck, the rough and gaudy cartoons of which have often what the Germans would call apackende Derbheitof their own that is by no means ineffective. Of the other American—as, indeed, of the other British—comic papers I prefer to say nothing, except that I have often seen them in houses and in hands to which they seemed but ill adapted.

Among the characteristics of American humour—the humour of the average man, the average newspaper, the average play—are its utter irreverence, its droll extravagance, its dry suggestiveness, itsnaïveté(real or apparent), its affectation of seriousness, its fondness for antithesis and anti-climax. Mark Twain may stand as the high priest of irreverence in American humour, as witnessed in his "Innocents Abroad" and his "Yankee at the Court of King Arthur." In this regard the humour of our transatlantic cousins cannot wholly escape a charge of debasing the moral currency by buffoonery. It has no reverence for the awful mystery of death and the Great Beyond. An undertaker will place in his window a card bearing the words: "You kick the bucket; we do the rest." A paper will head an account of the hanging of three mulattoes with "Three Chocolate Drops." It has no reverence for the names and phrases associated with our deepest religious feelings. Buckeye's patent filter is advertised as thoroughly reliable—"being what it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be." Mr. Boyesen tells of meeting a venerable clergyman, whose longevity, according to his introducer, was due to the fact that "he was waiting for a vacancy in the Trinity." One of the daily bulletins of the captain of the large excursion steamer on which Ivisited Alaska read as follows: "The Lord only knows when it will clear; andhewon't tell." And none of the two hundred passengers seemed to find anything unseemly in this official freedom with the name of their Creator. On a British steamer there would almost certainly have been some sturdy Puritan to pull down the notice. One of the best newspaper accounts of the Republican convention that nominated Mr. J.G. Blaine for President in 1884 began as follows: "Now a man of God, with a bald head, calls the Deity down into themêléeand bids him make the candidate the right one and induce the people to elect him in November." If I here mention the newspaper head-line (apropos of a hanging) "Jerked to Jesus," it is mainly to note that M. Blouët saw it in 1888 and M. Bourget also purports to have seen it in 1894. Surely the American journalist has a fatal facility of repetition or—?

American humour has no reverence for those in high position or authority. An American will say of his chief executive, "Yes, the President has a great deal of taste—and all of it bad." A current piece of doggerel when I was in Washington ran thus:

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