Athletics and the American Race. From O'Reilly's "Ethics of Boxing." (Ticknor.) A FEW years ago, in New England, a young man who was fond of rowing or riding, or any other vigorous sport, was considered to be on the high road to ruin. It was not respectable even to whistle; and the cheerful whistler is a lost artist in New England. This is changed completely. In the greatest school in America, Harvard, there is probably the most perfect gymnasium in the world; and the annual games at all the universities and higher schools of America, where the mothers and sisters of the best-bred boys in the country are present in thousands, are not unworthy modern representations of the national games of Greece. Gymnasiums are growing common in New England in connection with schools-their proper relation. It is beginning to be realized that, under our confined and artificial city life, the bodies of boys and girls need as much and as careful training and cultivation as their minds. "A sound mind in a sound body" promises to become an American, as it was a Roman, proverb. To cultivate the mind at the expense of the body is to put a premium on immorality, rascality, and craziness. There never was a race so fond of athletics as the American is going to be as it is already-at least not since the Olympiads. The best of the English fieldsports are confined to the aristocracy. There never was a race with so many and so various athletes as the American. Our games are not "sacred" like the Greeks', nor are they national or periodical, or belonging at Home." (Holt.) to a class-except our fox-hunting in scarlet and top-boots. We do not concentrate our athletic efforts into four days every four or five years like the Greeks. Our Olympiads begin every May and last till November, and take in every boy and man who has warm blood in his veins." A GRACEFUL POSE. From Brydges' "Uncle Sam It is no longer regarded as deplorable for a youth to aspire to be an athlete. The whole country hangs in suspense over a college race or foot-ball game. The Greeks had runners, wrestlers, boxers, charioteers, quoit-throwers, bull-tamers; the Romans had boxers, wrestlers, and swordsmen. We have more than all these. Base-ball alone in America makes more athletes yearly than the whole curriculum of Elis. The youths who "break the records" for running, leaping, rowing, and foot-ball in American colleges would take all the laurel and parsley crowns at Isthmia and Corinth. For every Greek chariot driver we have a thousand American yachtsmen. Greece and Rome will be nowhere in athletics in comparison with New England alone, twenty-five years hence, if the wave of popular interest in field and water and gymnasium sports, which is now rapidly rising, is allowed to proceed un checked. THE edition of "Chambers' Encyclopedia" just out, in its article on "base-ball," says that the game was mentioned in Miss Austen's "Northanger Abbey," written about 1798, and leaves us to infer that it was the same game that we now know by that name. It was not necessary to go into the realm of fiction to find this ancient use of the name. A writer to the London Times in 1874 pointed out that in 1748 the family of Frederick, Prince of Wales, were represented as engaged in a game of base-ball. Miss Austen refers to baseball as played by the daughters of "Mrs. Morland," the eldest of whom was fourteen. In Blaine's Rural Sports," London, 1852, in an introduction to ball games in general, occurs this passage: "There are few of us of either sex but have engaged in base-ball since our majority." Whether in all these cases the same game was meant matters not, and it is not established by the mere identity of names. "Base," as meaning a place of safety, dates its origin from the game of "prisoners' base" long before anything in the shape of base-ball or rounders; so that any game of ball in which bases were a feature would likely be known by that name. The fact that in the three instances in which we find the name mentioned it is always a game for girls or women, would justify the suspicion that it was not always the same game, and that it in any way resembled our game is not to be imagined. Base-ball in its mildest form is essentially a robust game, and it would require an elastic imagination to conceive of little girls possessed of physical powers such as its play demands. Besides, if the English base-ball of 1748, 1798, and 1852 were the same as our base-ball we would have been informed of that fact long ago, and it would never have been necessary to attribute the origin of our game to rounders. And when, in 1874, the American players were introducing baseball to Englishmen, the patriotic Briton would not have said as he then did, that our game was only rounders with the rounder left out," but he would at once have told us that base-ball itself was an old English game. 44 In a little book called "Jolly Games for Happy Homes," London, 1875, dedicated to "wee little babies and grown-up ladies," there is described a game called "base-ball." It is very similar in its essence to our game and is probably a reflection of it. It is played by a number of girls in a garden or field. Having chosen sides, the "leader" of the "out" side tosses the ball to one of the 'ins," who strikes it with her hand and then scampers for the trees, posts, or other objects previously designated as bases. Having recovered the ball, the " scouts," or those on the "outs," give chase and try to hit the fleeing one at a time when she is between bases. There must be some other means, not stated, for putting out the side; the ability to throw a ball with accuracy is vouchsafed to few girls, and if the change of innings depended upon this, the game, like a Chinese play, would probably never end. It is described, however, as a charining pastime, and, notwithstanding its simplicity, is doubtless a modern English conception of our National Game. . . . But if base-ball is neither sprung from rounders nor taken bodily from another English game, what is its origin? I believe it to be a fruit of the inventive genius of the American boy. Pleasures of Canoeing. From the New York Tribune. A MORE pleasant way of spending a vacation for a man of contemplative mood is hard to find than a cruise up some river, dodging into its tributary creeks and paddling by the pleasant farms, up into leafy woodlands till the water gets too shallow for a good-sized trout to follow, and then down again, camping on the hay-scented banks and calling, a welcomed guest, at the farmers' houses for small purchases of eggs and milk to eke out the limited larder your little cock-pit holds. Your boat goes straight ahead, poking its nose everywhere and letting you see what is coming, not backing up in the crab-like way of a row-boat. She draws even less than a municipal water-cart Amiens, the French Venice. From Pennell's "Sentimental Journey." (Longmans, G.) WHAT pleased us most were the many canallike branches of the Somme, old tumbled-down houses rising from the water, and little footbridges connecting them with opposite gardens. We liked, too, the wider and less modest main current of the river, where men or women in flat boats with pointed prows and square sterns, like inclined planes, were forever poling themselves down stream beyond the embankment where the poplars begin. But I remember we lingered longest on a bridge over a tiny canal from which there was a fine view or disreputably back doors, women appearing and disappearing as they emptied their pails and pots, and of battered windows from which hung the family wardrobes. seems to do when sprinkling July dust, and will carry you in three and a half inches of water; she quickly responds to the lightest touch of your paddle, and with a little rag of canvas over her bow and a favoring breeze will slip along mile after mile, letting you lie lazily full length on your cushion with your back supported by a cosey swinging rest, with nothing to do but steer, bask, admire, reflect, and grow fonder of your craft, which soon comes to be regarded as one of the family, to be petted, cared for, and loved. Naturally enough, woman, who now shares all man's best sports, is taking kindly to this gentle pastime. Many patterns of canoes are specially designed for her conveniences and fancies, and well the fair sex handle them. Many women enjoy sailing in the same craft with their husbands or brothers, and the double canoe, with the woman in front steering or paddling. (Copyright, 1888, by Ticknor & Co.) It was then, I believe, we pronounced Amiens the French Venice-an original idea which most likely occurs to every tourist fortunate enough to find his way to the banks of the Somme. Indeed I have since read that in the good old days before a straight street had been dreamed of by city officials, the town was known as Little Venice. Delightful as were the scenes by the river in the late afternoon, they were even more so in the early morning, when, from under a borrowed umbrella, we watched the open-air market. The embankment was carpeted with greens and full of noisy peasants. The prevailing tint, like that of the sky above, was a dull bluish gray, relieved here and there by a dash of white. Fastened to rings in the stone wall of the embankment some thirty or forty of the boats with pointed prows lay on the water. Two, piled high with cabbages and carrots, the brightest bit of color in the picture, were being poled towards the marketplace. Others, laden with empty baskets, satisfied-looking women in the prow, a man at the stern, were on their homeward way. And above the river and the busy people and the background of houses the great cathedral loomed up, a "mass of wall, not blank, but strangely wrought by the hands of foolish men of long ago." We found a priest saying mass in the chapel behind the choir, the eastern light shining on him at the altar. His congregation consisted of four poor women and one great lady in silk attire kneeling in the place of honor. In the nave and aisles were a handful of tourists and two sentimental travellers, i.e., ourselves, who scorned to be classed as tourists-uttering platitudes under their breath about the unspeakable feeling of space and height, as if the cathedral existed but to excite their wonder. America Still Under British Rule. 1 defies it in a coat whose cut' is a docile acknowledgment of that crown's resistless power. The influence of a social leader is shown in nothing so strongly as in his ability to make two continents wear clothes cut as he chooses." Flowers of the Old Garden. From The Old Garden," by Margaret Deland. (Houghton.) THE BLUEBELL. My shy Bluebell, With a strolling bumble-bee Sweet, give your heart to me "I love but you, And I'll be true, O give me your heart, I pray!" "I will!" she said, PANSY. Pansy in a purple dress Would her loving thought confess; The Old Orchard. From Up from the Cape." (Estes & L.) THE charm of a small farm on the New England Coast is usually its orchard. An old apple orchard in Barnstable County and the Bay towns has beauties that no city forrester could produce in his imitations of Italian gardens. From the time that the bluebirds arrive and the red-headed woodpeckers first show their mottled wings on the dead boughs until the last pippin falls there is pleasure to be taken in the orchard. When the orioles and thrushes come, and the arms of the trees are filled with blooms; when the air is full of the songs of robins and the passing breezes with delicious, almost suffocating odors; when the listless May days return with the hum of bees, and the slightest stir in the air sends down showers of broken blossoms in creamy flakes upon the emerald turf; in dewy June mornings and celestial midsummer days; in early autumn and late autumn when the falling of the fruit follows the falling of the blossoms and when at last the dropping of the russet leaves ends all, it seems as though something Paradisic remained in the mossy old trees, and one is reminded that the same Hand that fashioned the immortal gardens gave the world such scenes as these whose beauties the resurrective power of the spring-time eternally renews. From Brydges' "Uncle Sam at Home. (Holt.) NOTHING illustrates so well the absurdity of Anglomania in America as the fact that an English tailor should find it profitable to advertise such caricatures. And the prices this audacious Briton demands for his wares! I dare not repeat what some of my friends tell of his charges; it is almost incredible. Surely no ridicule can be too great for such a craze. American papers are full of it. Perhaps some good might be done if English papers took up the cry; for Americans are sensitive to English criticism. Indeed it is the only criticism to which they are sensitive. For a Frenchman's ridicule they do not care a red cent, as they would say; and no other Continental nation sees anything in America to laugh at. It is said that one has to go abroad to learn all about one's own country. In America I learnt many things about England of which I had previously no knowledge. One discovery was that the Prince of Wales introduces all changes in dress, manners, and social arrangements. I suppose he has as much to do with such changes as anybody; but I conformed for many years to dicta without knowing who gave the orders. It was from a publication of Harpers' that I first learned to whom I am indebted for lengthening the lapels of my coat and giving a curve to the rim of my hat. I am duly grateful-nay, more, for I had often declaimed at fashion when the tailor assured me that my new coat must differ from the old one, though the latter satisfied me in every particular. The paragraph in Harpers' which revealed my obligations to royalty ends with a thought worth quoting: "It was said that the dropping of a pebble in the ocean produced a movement which was continued to the utmost confines of the sea. The whim or the comfort of one exalted or dandiacal personage may likewise, in the cut of a coat or the form of a shoe, go round the world. Unconsciously even we republicans are subjects of a king, and the severe and scornful defier of the authority of the British crown the fall. A DUDINE. The orchard at uncle's was indeed a noble one; it had grown into mossy colonnades in the salt air of more than fifty years. The dead limbs were full of woodpecker's holes, the certain evidences of age. Into the abandoned nests of the woodpeckers of other years, the wrens and bluebirds swarmed. Wherever else the air was close and sultry, the orchard was always cool. The poultry loved the orchard, and the peacock announced the coming storm from its bars. The children of two generations had played there, looking into the birds' nests in the spring, and fighting mimic battles, like Francis I. with the oranges, in From Mrs. Whitney's "Bird Talk." (Copyright, 1887, by Houghton, Mifflin & Co.) A Little Fisherman. From Pool's" Vacation in a Buggy." (Putnam.) WE let him squeeze into the buggy. Boy fashion, he hung his tin pail on one of the steps, and he rested his fishing-rod over the dash-board. He said there was a particular brook that he hadn't tried this year, and if he didn't go there before the thick of the haying, he never should go; that was the amount of it. He meant to stay all day if he wasn't eat up by the skeeters, and he meant to have a tarnation good fish supper when he got home. He informed us that the tin pail held two kinds of lunch, one kind for him and one for the fishes. His was doughnuts and theirs was worms, and he guessed most likely they was wrigglin' some. At this we shuddered, and asked him if he had the worms in the same pail with the dough nuts. "Oh Lor', yes," he answered complacently. "Don't do no harm; they have different compartments. They are all right, you bet." He stooped over and swung his pail up from where it hung, opened it and showed a bakingpowder tin box tightly closed. "That's where the wrigglin's goin' on," he said. "Want to see 'em?" "Oh, no! no!" "Have a doughnut? They are prime." We declined, and he rehung his pail, remarking that women were the queerest things in the world. "They are not half as queer as boys," I said with emphasis. He did not reply for some time, occupying himself by carefully removing the flies from the horse with his rod. Finally he said: "Yes, they be, a million times queerer." "How?" "Wall, for one thing, there ain't a boy on earth that would have tied a sponge onto a horse's He might have tied it onto his tail, but not his ear." ear. "But we did not mean to do that." "I saw ye a comin'." he went on," the sponge a bobbin', and the horse naturally as mad as thunder. He'd 'a' kicked up in another rod. Don't look like a woman's horse, somehow." "Thank you." said my friend; "that was the one thing we did not intend he should look like." "I guess you'll have a smash-up before you get through with him. I s'pose you're out on a trip for scenery, ain't ye?" "Yes, we are in pursuit of scenery." The boy's gray eyes wandered over the prospect, and I watched the look of love come in his brown face. "I don't find no fault with it about here," he said. "I don't think I could get along without hills and streams and ponds. Wonder how it all looked when the Indians was round." Upon this we started eagerly on the subject of the redskins. The boy knew all that we knew and a great deal more. He said he had found seven arrow-heads on his father's farm at different times, when he had been ploughing. If we would tell him how to direct, he would send us one by mail. It was with regret that we parted from him, when he suddenly recollected how far he had been carried. Half-way across a field he turned and waved his tin pail at us. Now will he send the arrow-head? I believe he will. Harpswell Point. From Carter's "Summer Cruise on the Coast of New England." (Cupples & H.) I HAD been struck, as I saw it from the deck of the sloop, with the singular beauty of the place and its resemblance to the abode of the fisherman in "Undine." "He dwelt in a very beautiful spot. The grassy land on which his cottage was built extended far out into a great lake; and it seemed as if out of love this slip of ground stretched itself into the clear, blue, and wonderfully bright waters, and also as if the waters, with loving arms, clasped the fair meadows with their highwaving grass and flowers and the refreshing shade of the trees. Yet was this pleasant place seldom or never trodden by any but the fisherman and his household, for behind the slip of land lay a very wild wood-" No description could be more exact. Here, before our eyes, was the solitary cottage, the grassy point of land, the clear, blue, bright waters, the refreshing shade of trees, and behind the house the identical wild wood that separated the dwelling of Undine's fosterfather from the rest of the world. Surely La Motte Fouqué must have seen Harpswell Point in a vision or dream. The only differences between the two places were, that instead of a great lake there was a great bay, and that the surges of the Atlantic were rolling on the other side of the strip of land; but these were not material. To a Doleful Poet. From Ballades and Rondeaus." (Appleton.) And the birds are singing, and all the air Life's sorrows are many, its Joys so few! Of black thoughts bide in their doleful lair, Give us glad songs; sing us free from care. Gladness maketh the world anew. Why are you sad? H. COURTHOPE BOWEN. Madame and Marie. From Grace King's" Monsieur Motte." (Armstrong.) MADAME and Marie went up the winding steps to the gallery to await Mademoiselle Aurore and her never-ceasing theme of plantation crises. The moon had risen, and changed the landscape from the showy splendor of sunset to a weird etherealization. The rose-vines, which had crept over from the garden to garland and wreathe the brick pillars, threw fantastic, flitting shadows on the gallery floor, and checkered their faces. The broad path to the river was silver, the tall gateposts were whitened into marble monuments, the river was a boundless sea of golden ripples. The faint sounds of animated life in the quarters made the loneliness and silence inside the wild-orange hedge more intense. Madame sank in her rocking-chair for another séance with herself: Marie was young, Marie could have ideals, Marie could yet dream in the moonlight, unchidden by life and experience." She looked at the slight, childish figure, seated on the balustrade, leaning her head far back in her arms, looking up, beyond the moss, the trees, and the clouds, to follow the moon making and unmaking phantasmagorial cities, lakes, and mountains in the world above her-lost in an ecstasy of self-forgetfulness, drifting away from earth and mortality, soaring higher and higher on the wings of a pure, fresh imagination, until the glorious orb itself is reached, and the silver rays make her one of themselves. She envied morbidly the pure spirituality which yet enveloped the young girl, her unspotted cleanliness of simplicity, her virgin ignorance of the quantities in the problem of life, her incapacity for calculation. There were surprises yet in store for her, there was still an unknown before her. Whatever misfortune had done to her, could do to her, her seventeen years had been protected and were flawless in their innocence. "I was once like Marie, and she will one day be like me. Why must women be always looking for the unattainable-why cannot we be contented? Enfin-one cannot always be seventeen and wear white dresses; but if it is the will of God, why must we have these feelings, these moments, for example? She will know it all, she will crave to know it, and then, like me, she will crave acquittance of the knowledge and the refreshment of ignorance again. It is always with us women the fight between the heart and the soul. The happy ones are born without the one or the other From Les Fiancés. La Neuvaine de Colette." (Jenkins.) JACQUES, nous sommes fiancés, donne-moi ta main; en me suivant, tu entreras en paradis. Le curé de Fond-de-Vieux consent à monter nous marier ici; les ouvriers sont dans la chapelle et la restaurent en toute hâte : elle sera prête dans trois semaines, et nous aurons les fleurs de juin pour l'embaumer. consentement à Comment j'ai arraché son mademoiselle d'Epine, je n'en sais plus rien, et je ne suis pas certain de ne pas avoir employé la violence; aussi se venge-t-elle, et, sous prétexte de convenances, ne nous quitte-t-elle plus ! Camarades et étrangers, nous étions libres; fiancés et tout près d'être époux, on nous surveille, et cette femme est mon supplice ! J'ai songé d'abord à me casser une seconde jambe, et maintenant j'apprends à Colette à parler latin. . . . Il ne nous faut pas un bien grand répertoire, d'ailleurs, car le mot que nous répétons est toujours le même ! Le soir de notre mariage, fidèle à un des mes plans, je l'emporterai, sinon jusqu'aux Indes, du moins plus haut encore qu'Erlange. Il passe parfois des chevriers ici, et je ne veux nul regard dans mon éden! A l'automne, je crois que tout sera prêt. Nous relevons nos ruines, et il faudra que tu choisisses ton appartement ces jours-ci dans les tours croulantes ou ailleurs; tout est à toi. Il n'y a qu'un endroit où il ne faut rien changer; tu devines lequel, et tu y veilleras, ami, si tu viens me remplacer parfois pendant mon absence: c'est la grande chambre boisée de chêne où Benoîte et mon docteur m'ont apporté un jour sans connaissance. An American Girl. From "Ballades and Rondeaus." (Appleton.) A Jacquemart etching, or a Haden, A Whistler, too, perchance might please She joins in singing simple glees. With Nilsson or with Gerster; she's I ask you for congratulation I go with her across the seas ENVOY. Princes, to you the Western breeze |