"r~ I ATHLETICS I FOR C4tM^^ %>^ Theo.C.Knauff IlLUQTf^ATClp ;! f i I ] ;-: 1 f. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation 1 http://www.archive.org/details/athleticsforphysOOknaurich ; ■<. -Jf- ^ ^ \ ^ FIG. 22. CENTRE RUSH AND OARS- MAN. HAR- VARD. ATHLETICS FOR Physical Culture BY THEO. C. KNAUFR NEW YORK : J. SKlyWIN TAIT & SONS, 65 Fifth Avenue. Copyright, J. SBlvWIN TAIT & SONS, New York, 1894. Contents. PAGE. I. Thk Needs of the Day 19 OD II. Gymnasium Work III. The Lighter Gymnastics 49 IV. Breathing 65 V. Equestrianism 75 VI. CycivIng 103 VII. Pedestrianism 131 VIII. Base-baix 149 IX. Cricket 163 X. Foot Bali. 183 XI. G01.F, Lawn-tennis, Lacrosse, P01.0 and Kin- dred vSports 209 XII. Rowing and Scui^ung 247 XIII. Swimming 265 XIV, Boxing, Wre;sti.ing and Fencing .... 291 XV. Archery 305 XVI. F1E1.D Sports, etc. 319 XVII. Out-door Life 335 (9) ivi67435; lO CONTENTS. PAGE. XVIII. Training 357 XIX. QuKSTiONs OF Hygiene ......... 367 XX. ATHI^ETIC Cl.UBvS 379 XXI. Professionaijsm 387 XXII. Women in Athletics 395 XXIII. C0NC1.US10N 415 List of Illustrations. PAGE. Diagram of shoulder exercise 51 Diagram of exercise in stooping 52 Swinging exercise 53 Movement of the head 54 Results of the Turner system . Facing 58 A blacksmith " 60 How's that? " 75 Two figures from DoUman's picture " 77 The same figures in outline, undraped 78 Similar figures from life Facing 78 Persian horsemanship 8r Grecian horsemen 83 Riding for pleasure in 1814 85 Down in front . . . . • Facing 86 Position of spinal column on side-saddle " 90 Cross-saddle riding — side view " 92 Cross. saddle riding — front view " 94 A riding costume 97 The same in the saddle 99 The start in cycle race Facing 103 Primitive cycle 104 (11) 12 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGK. Progressive cycle 105 The racing position Facing 113 Amateur imitation of racing position " 114 Skeleton on cycle " 116 Tail-piece — Cycling 128 A walker 133 A fast runner 135 A long-distance runner 137 Base-ball 145 A pitcher 155 Positions of the pitcher in the box Facing 156 Tail-piece — Base-ball 159 A cricket game Facing 163 Disease germs of base-ball and cricket 163 Bowling position Facing 166 Batting position " 172 Positions of the players in cricket 179 Tail-piece — Cricket 180 A Rugby game Facing 183 A centre rush " 198 A right guard " 200 The wall game at Eton " 204 Golf, stimie-lofting 211 In a stone-bunker 212 In whins 213 Golf clubs CO., 217 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 13 PAGE, Plan of golfing course 219 A lawn tennis field Facing 223 An ancient tennis court 229 Indian Baggataway 231 Preparations for Baggataway 233 A Choctaw player 234 A Sioux player 235 Squaws playing ball 237 Amateur lacrosse player Facing 238 Polo • • • 241 Tail-piece — Lawn Tennis 243 An eiglit-oared crew Facing 247 A modern oarsman . . " 248 Over-reaching in rowing 250 Correct position 251 The Cambridge course 257 The Oxford course 261 Tail-piece — Boating 262 A swnmming boy Facing 265 Swimming with artificial aids 273 The kick— first position 275 The kick — second position 276 The kick — third position 277 Back swimming— head foremost 278 Back swimming — feet foremost 279 Back swimming, with hands only 280 14 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE. Swimming machine 281 Boy on swimming machine — first position 283 Boy on swimming machine — second position 284 Boy on swimming machine — third position 285 Boy on swimming machine — fourth position 287 Various positions in boxing Facing 291 A counter hit 293 A boxer Facing 294 Wrestling at Cornell " 296 Amateur wrestling " 298 Fencing 299 Broad-sword 301 Tail-piece — Boxing 302 Drawing the bow Facing 306 Tail-piece — Archery 315 Putting the shot — before delivery Facing 319 Putting the shot — after delivery . . . . • " 322 A jumper 325 Curling . 327 Lawn Bowls Facing 330 Tail-piece — Sports 332 Out-door life Facing 335 Sailing 339 Tobogganing 341 On snow-shoes . 345 One form of house-boat Facing 346 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 15 PAGE. A cozy corner 349 Tail-piece — Fishing 353 Crew in training Facing 357 Too much food ..." 368 Three thousand Turners exercising " 380 Three thousand Turners — second position " 382 Modern Girls' Gymnasium " 395 Proposed gymnasium 1838 397 A Wellesley crew Facing 400 The divided skirt as a gymnastic dress " 402 Corset support and muscle support 404 Distortion by corsets while sitting 405 Normal female chest and back Facing 406 An abnormal type " 408 A faulty sitting position " 410 The Needs of the Day. The Needs of the Day. It is reasonably certain that man was originally made to live and exercise in the open air, bathe in rivers, expose his body to the healthful action of the sun, without even the protection of clothing, possibly to nest in trees. If houses were a neces- sity they would have been provided. A hardy man of that time, with no clothes to spoil, could not have objected to the play of the elements, or if that were too severe, the shelter of a friendly tree would have been ample. This was before the fall, of course, when man was intended to live forever. Even after. that unfortunate event, before false notions and artificial methods of living began, phy- sical perfection and length of life were at their best. An easy agricultural existence without worries was not sufficient to at once destroy all that God intended. As to physical perfection, we are told that there were giants upon the earth in those days, and as for long life, just think of it for a moment. Unless the ancient year is proven to have been of shorter duration, or unless some one starts the theory that Moses made a clerical error, we have the following facts: 19 20 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE Adam lived 930 years, being 130 years old when his best son Seth was born. Setli lived 912 years; Seth's son Bnos, 905 years; Cainan, son of Enos, 910 years; Mahalaleel, son of Cainan, 895 years; his son Jared, 962 years. His son Enoch lived on the earth 265 years and did not die, and Enoch's son, Methuselah lived 969 years. Methuselah touched high-water mark. After him the race began gradually to deteriorate. Granting there was such a length of life as we understand the term, what a lifeful it would have been as the world rushes along to-day. Supposing that Methuselah had just died, he would have been born in the year of our lyord 924, away back in the dark middle ages. What an old fogy he would have been now ! How antiquated his ideas would have become ! He could tell about how when he was a boy all the strong men went off on the cru- sades. The church reformations and the great reli- gious wars, he would know all about personally. He would remember when the Danish kings ruled in England, when they were beaten by the Saxons, they by the Normans, they in turn being succeeded by the Plantagenets. All the monarchs of England that we are particularly interested in would have been his contemporaries. When he had just passed his five hundred and twenty-second birthday, Colum- bus would have set sail for the new world. Our Revolution would have been one of his latter day THE NEEDS OF THE DAY. 21 events, so recent that the old man would not remember it so well as something belonging to his younger days. If we even grant the claim of some that the ancient year might have been a shorter interval, even as short as three months, the fact remains that these ancient lives were long lives, longer than at present, and that they deteriorated at about a cer- tain date, as unnatural methods of living increased, until man's life came down to the three score years and ten. Modern life statistics tell us that we have reduced the average far below that figure. If Methuselah had adopted our ideas and lived as we do, could he have lived as long as he did ? The probabilities are that he simply existed. He led an even placid life without wear and tear. He had no worry. He was never in a hurry. To have even visited the stock board would have taken off a century from his life. To have been crowded into a city house would have cost him at least two more. If he could not have afforded to play farmer, for real farming to-day is hard work, he could never have stood it at all. He could not possibly have undergone the mental strain of a round-up in modern herding. The primitive physically perfect man who has been described, must not be confused with the aboriginal man of to-day, who has degenerated to a far greater extent than his civilized brother. He 22 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. follows only animal instinct without even animal intelligence. He violates every law of health, and in spite of his outdoor life is a creature of ills, pains and short life. It is claimed that with us, very modern statistics now show that the length of human life is again on the increase during a late series of years. If this be so, may it not be caused by the modern revival of athletics ? May we not, by continuance in such well doing, help to lengthen the span of life until we get back to v/here we started, may not the experiment be worth trying, and may not such books as this aid in the good work ? Deep down in every man's mind, notwithstand- ing all protestations to the contrary, will probably be found the desire that he might live as long as Methuselah, without regard to whether he desires a long life for purposes of good or evil. More cer- tainly still will be found the desire to so live the life he has as to get the best out of it. We all want to enjoy the best health while we live; the question is how best to attain it. Man is made with a body containing certain separate parts, each of which must be kept in proper use or the others will suffer. This becomes a troublesome question in complex modern life. For awhile man ran to the extreme of exclu- sively physical development. The men of that time were but brutes. Improved mental training THE NEEDS OF THE DAY. 23 showed the fallacy of this. Then during a long course of years the mental faculties were made prominent at the expense of the physical. Again the defects of such an arrangement were evident, and there was again danger of a reaction in favor of a former fault. The need of to-day is a proper balance of the mental and physical. There must be the proper exercise of all parts of the body, both mental and physical, such as will fit a man for the work which God has given him, and without an undue expenditure of time or money. The ques- tion is what will bring the best results, and how best to guard against an injurious excess in any direction. Many a man of to-day feels the effects of want of proper exercise in early life. If he has lived in the city, he has settled down to sedentary habits too soon. To the young, exercise is as necessary to the body as the food eaten. The disposition to athletics in the young comes naturally, and hangs on to an adult in proportion as he retains his youthful vigor. The young of the lower animals begin to exer- cise their bodies from the day they own them. A yotmg monkey, a frisky lamb, a playful kitten, are simply doing so much necessary gymnastic work but in a pleasant way. There is at least one authentic instance of a cat who lived to the great age of twenty-one years. Almost to her last day, 24 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. regularly at early morning, when fresli from her regular sleep at regular hours, she would chase her tail and perform other kitten antics for an hour. Who can say that this exercise and regularity were not the cause of her prolonged life. Most adult cats know enough to take some outdoor exercise regularly, — a stroll on the back fence, or a friendly boxing bout without gloves with a neighbor. In cities, where people of mental occupation mostly congregate, we find, outside of athletic circles, less physical strength than in the country. It has been claimed that cities would die out were it not for the continual infusion of new blood from the country. This is not quite true to-day. While there is more strength of muscle in the country, the conditions of life there are also artificial. It has become harder and harder in the more thickly settled regions to worry a living from the soil. This is the cause of much wear and tear. This disadvantage the modern Agricultural Experiment Station and Science are laboring to overcome, and with good hope of success. To a certain extent the hardships of farm life with long hours of labor, particularly on dairy farms, are being overcome. The agricultural newspaper is beginning to supply the mental food which was before lacking, for with- out a complete body, mental and physical, there can be no perfect health. The farmer to-day is becoming an educated person. THE NEEDS OF THE DAY. 25 As to how it comes that with stronger bodies than the citizen, the farmer may yet be inferior physically, that brings us to another branch of our subject. It does not follow that because a man has an abnormal development of muscle in one or more parts, he is necessarily in perfect physical health. The sudden collapse of many a champion athlete attests this fact strongly. A round-shouldered boating man, or circus trapeze performer, are examples only of a specialty in the development. The farmer to-day has the disadvantage of bad food and poorly ordered work. Pastry heavy as lead, bread made with saleratus, and fried meat are not healthful. He usually lacks the knowledge of this fact. He exists in spite of his drawbacks by reason of his outdoor life and muscle exercise, though his average duration of life is not longer than that of a well-ordered city brother. The farmer's work, in spite of the educational news- paper, still lacks the mental pleasure it once had. He has not learned to see his farm duties with the eye of a Burroughs. Without that pleasurable interest in nature; his plowing, hoeing and hay- making, by hand or machinery, might as well be drain-digging in a city. Some adherents of physical culture insist that physical training should be done as a business, as ne- cessary work, because it is of sufficient importance. 26 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. There is, of course, always a disposition to try if possible to escape from/ labor with sweat of brow by which man must earn his bread. But why should we endure that which is not necessary ? Methuselah probably did not work two hours daily on weights or dumb-bells, year in and year out, in the solemn solitude of a gymnasium, in order to secure his long life. He took less artificial methods. This again brings us to another branch. Exer- cise, to produce its best effect, must be recreation, mental as well as physical. We cannot separate any one part of our economy and produce the best results. There must be a well-rounded develop- ment. There must be relaxation of what has already been too much strained, and there must be moderation. Regarding the recreative side, the time will never come when the playground rather than the gymnasium will not be the most import- ant part of a school outfit which includes physical well-being in its considerations. We do not all want to be walking anomalies with barrels for thighs, or one arm abnormally devel- oped, while some other part of the body may be abnormall)^ weak. That may do for the man whose means of livelihood may depend upon it. What most of us want is to have our bodies har- moniously developed on the general plan on which they were built. THE NEEDS OF THE DAY. 27 If our average is to have a certain moderate amount of strength, we should not try to rival some one whose massive frame seems made to sup- port a world almost. A well-developed body is a well-proportioned body, not necessarily a large body. We want each of the faculties which God has given us, every muscle, every member, in per- fect working order, so that we can call upon any one of them for any necessary service at a moment's notice. And how can this be done unless we keep them all in exercise. If we make our arms our specialty, the day may come when our legs may be needed. If we use only our legs, our arms may some day fail us. In like manner if we exercise only the mind, how shall the body be kept work- ing. When the mind most needs the help of the body, the body will not be in condition to be relied upon. We take it that the body that can in every way be depended upon to be the mental servant, is of more value than one trained only for brute strength and endurance. In which direction do our modern athletics tend ? Athletics, for the purpose of excelling in a given branch, for combats, for trials of skill or endurance, for money-making, for gambling direct or indirect, for excitement, are carried to great extreme. The results in physical culture have not been entirely satisfactory. 28 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. A proper use of athletics, with the particular end in view of a proper physical development, such as will better fit the body for the ordinary require- ments of life, is more desirable than a system which only aims for the attainment of superior excellence in the particular athletic department chosen. Keeping this end in view it is possible to use any athletic training to advantage. Excess will be avoided. The failure to see the results, due to want of system, will not be so noticeable. Any system can be made use of. If, for instance, elaborate and immensely expensive gymnastic appli- ances, such as exist in Yale's great gymnasium, at Harvard or at the new Chicago University, and which can be enjoyed by but one in a thousand, are at hand, they can be utilized. If the patient prefers an anthropometric chart, with accurate measure- ments, and a course of exact indoor exercise by prescription, say on machines number 23, 47, 50, etc. , so many hours each, well and good. If again, no appliances are at hand, a system of indoor gymnastics entirely unassisted by artificial appara- tus, of which there are many in existence, can be utilized. If he prefers exercise tempered with recreation in the form of games and sports, that is also good if he only knows what form he needs most and how to get and apply it. There is good in all if he only knows how to extract it, and is content to indulge to moderation only. THE NEEDS OF THE DAY. 29 By far the most profitable way of getting this good is the latter form, making use of such out- door athletic occupations as at once give bodily exercise, occupation and recreation to the mind, the pleasure of genial society, change of scenery, and the inhaling of good outdoor fresh air. These can be used as a card player can use use his game, not simply to win the stake, but to give a clearer head the next day, through the innocent recreation. The average man or woman, unprofessional in athletics, particularly a young person intent on practical life, or a person in business, wants to know how he can best gain the desirable end. He hears his athletic friend warning him that he is in need of exercise. He perhaps sees that friend devote so much time to his chosen athletic specialty that his chance of preferment in life is in danger. The friend perhaps becomes a professional athlete and makes a living out of athletics which he does not care to do. It may be this same professional of a sudden becomes a physical wreck from excess, or is attacked by disease in a part not included in his physical training. He may see that friend, if unsuccessful in distancing others in some athletic pursuit, become merely a spectator interested in athletics, but personally in no better physical con- dition than himself The average business man has at most only an hour or two that he can devote to exercise. He 30 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. would like to follow his friend's advice to wliicli his physician has perhaps added warning, and also to steer clear of the evils he notices. He would like to hit the happy medium in exercise which will insure health without imdue attention to the matter. He would like to know how and when to put in his little time to the best advantage, and whether it is within the limits of his purse. He consults textbooks on athletics or sports, all of which are complete and exhaustive. According to their statements, if he devotes his whole time to it, according to directions which he must follow closely, he may master some one department, but he must do so scientifically and thoroughly to become an expert. It may be that he does not want to be- come an expert. He may even want to dabble in several things at once. A portion of one thing may be what he wants in one way and a portion of another in another way. And where shall he learn the exact physical benefit of each ? In the effort to obtain information as to how to get exercise without making a business of it, he has to rely mainly upon himself If the textbooks are too much and he goes to a physical trainer he may there also find too much system, too much time, too much effort required. The inquirer is particularly disgusted after read- ing the textbooks to find that all athletic branches seem to require as much labor as sawing wood. He THE NEEDS OF THE DAY. 31 had a scandalous idea that he might get his exer- cise combined with recreation, but all authorities agree in calling it work. He had no idea of turn- ing the prospect of play into such a serious matter. If one idea has to go, the exercise idea goes first, and the recreation idea remains. He wants relaxa- tion, not to ride a hobby to death. He is already in a business and does not want to engage in another more elaborate one. If any one could tell him how to get physical training with the means at his command joined with pleasure, how to engage in athletics moderately without being frowned down as a mediocre amateur, he would like it. He wants some one, in short, to tell him how to get exercise which will enable him to do more work in working hours by means of play in play hours. If that is what he wants to know, that is exactly what we propose to tell him. k Gymnasium Work, s. 11. Gymnasium Work. As indicated, these pages do not attempt to be a guide and textbook in each particular branch of athletics. Rules will be found elsewhere, the umpire can appeal to other authorities. No one is here urged to win a contest except as a means of creating a sufficient interest to continue the pursuit. If perchance some one, whose aim has hitherto been to gain brute development only may be given a knowledge of the right use of exercise, or if some one who has before taken no part or interest because of the intricate scientific cloud which surrounds the subject shall be tempted to consider it, or if some one of the still numerous army of busy workers who strive early and late at business, grudging a moment for family, nourishment, or rest, shall begin to realize his position, the end will have been gained. The aim is to be a source of information as to how, with what ease and at what expense, the needed relief may be found. Atten- tion will be drawn to both use and abuse, to what has been, what is and what might be. We aim to show the physical effect and good of each pursuit, (35) 36 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. how serviceable it may be as a means of relaxation, how far it is available, and what constitutes modera- tion. In this light we now consider the subject of applied gymnasium training. In this, as in every other branch, one point must be kept prominent, the training should not be one- sided. The tendency is to do what one can do well until tired of it. That thing is just what we do not need to do. The fact that you do it well is a sure sign that you are already fully developed in that direction. It cannot be said too often that a harmonious development is necessary to perfect health, which alone gives great power of endurance if the unex- pected strain is suddenly necessary. That alone •gives the maximum useful effect. When man was first created, he was not only intended to live outdoors but he was intended to do everything. He was not planned for a specialist, but for what we term to-day an all-round player. If it were otherwise, a boating man would have been created without legs (at least before the inven- tion of the sliding seat). A pedestrian would have had no use for arms. By rights we should be taught to write with either hand, and the only reason that we are not is that life is too short to expend that much time on teaching two to do what we can get out of one. - GYMNASIUM WORK. 37 ^Harmony and moderation are the two watch- words for modern serviceable athletics. To gain these requires some system. Caprice should not govern. It often happens that the newly-awakened con- vert rushes off to a gymnasium as the only saving cure for all physical ills. Why he should select the dullest form of athletic work, which has not the charm of emulation, the great aid of outdoor life, the pleasure of companionship, and perhaps practice it only at night when the system is at its lowest ebb, when an effort has to be made to get the job done, and when from the physiological effect it becomes work and not exercise, can only be accounted for by supposing that he considers it a matter of duty. This enforced work, particularly if under no supervision, is often of such a character as to produce no harmonious development. Some particular gymnastic feat is perhaps acquired and that is all. The result is anything but a state of general health. Perhaps on the advice of his physician, the so- called physical trainer has given him an athletic prescription. He follows directions and times him- self at each exercise. Is there anything more for- lorn than to go into a gymnasium and see a grown man in gymnastic tights solemnly paddling around a solitary walking track by the hour, with no apparent end or object, without emulation or the 38 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. incentive of competition, and consequently without interest. His walk recalls the sad sea waves by which he walked with his last love, with equal regularity though with less purpose. It is equally depressing to see him pulling the weights or punch- ing a bag. No lower animal would stand it. If he did not do it from choice no money could hire him to attempt it. Condemn him to a tread-mill in a jail, which would virtually be the same thing, and he would die of exhaustion. By adopting gymnasium exercises to the exclu- sion of other forms of athletics he does violence to the superior intelligence of man who has a desire to emulate for emulation's sake. Even a horse will try to pass a competitor on the road unurged, without a thought of prize money or winnings. Emulation is a very ancient mode of securing all kinds of culture. By thus limiting the field the would-be athlete throws away many chances of recreation which can be so pleasantly combined with exercise. The value of exercise as exercise is increased if it is made pleasing and attractive. In other fields the quick eye, ready hand, habits of command, readiness in emergency, methods of co-operation and philosophical habits of thought under de- feat can all be cultivated while exercising, and they are all of the utmost value in life, insuring success. GYMNASIUM WORK. S9 Gymnasium life has often the drawback, not so much now as formerly, that a class of amateur experts take possession who give informal exhi- bitions, during which the valuable time of the amateur is wasted. This necessitates much sit- ting around in thin clothing, possibly while over- heated, which, though giving needed rest, does more harm than good. There is, however, a brighter side to the picture. A modern gymnasium has its place. It may be that the patient has gained his first knowledge that there is such a place, through the imperative order of his physician, to whom he has gone in danger of collapse from nervous exhaustion. He then learns that there exist in cities certain institu- tions which have classes which make use of certain apparatus, with more or less regularity and sys- tem, under more or less supervision, with an attempt at emulation, and a show of making it interesting. He is advised that he had better join one of these classes, when he learns that all the apparatus seen in gymnasiums are not for stage exhibitions as supposed. In many well-regulated gymnasiums he finds an intelligent instructor, who tells him his needs. He is put through a certain drill which, if the instructor has the knack, has some merit of emulation and is made interesting or even amusing. If these latter merits are miss- ing, he will notice that he goes through the forms 40 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. of exercise but his heart is not in it. If he is of mature age he sticks to the course for the good that is in it, but it is irksome. You can see that while exercising he is thinking about the same thing that he was when he entered, which thoughts he carries away with him. He is not resting nor recreating. It is a question, outside of the large colleges where enough system exists to make gymnastic work obligatory, whether many expensive gymna- siums are filling the places they are intended for, frequently from want of a good instructor or proper regulation. Most of the gymnasiums advertised as part of the equipment of schools amount to nothing whatever on account of the absence of instruction. A gymnasium without a skilled instructor is a source of danger rather than benefit, and the more so the more complete it is. As well might we have a drug store with a remedy for every disease in it, in charge of no one or an incompetent hand. The Young Men's Christian Associations and the Athletic Clubs are doing something in this line for which they deserve credit, but it is as yet far from being thorough enough. They are supplying gymnasiums and instructors where none could otherwise be had. In the Asso- ciations in many places, and sometimes in the club- houses, the gymnasiums are in cellars, in most unheal thful surroundings from want of air, light GYMNASIUM WORK. 41 and comforts. This is not as it should be. Who- ever invented the idea of putting health resorts into cellars should be strung up at once as an enemy to the human race. The idea of a certain physical instructor, which is a good one, is that a gymnasium should have every appliance for com- fort and be as near an approach to the open air as possible. It should be at the top of the house, not the bottom. For winter it should be covered, but for mild weather it should have a roof like the Cirque (T Ete near the Champs-Klysees, Paris. The massive cover of this great building comes in half and rolls to each side by means of heavy machin- ery and tracks, leaving the amphitheatre open to the air. Such an arrangement would give the gymnasium all the air and sunlight possible, and as pure as it could be had in the locality. There is room for many good gymnasiums in many cities, which should be conveniently located to save time, and be put within the reach of all. They should not be run in a way to make them a waste of money. What should be done in such general gymnasiums is to approach as near as possible the best physical curriculum, such as is now in use only in the greater colleges. At the present time the German Turners make the nearest approach to giving such a course to people in ordinary life, but they accomplish it only among the Germans. Among the latter a 42 ATHLETICS POR PHYSICAL CULTURE. gymnasium means a place of exercise, not a place to be looked at only or exhibited, and the Turner system is a drill under the most watchful military discipline. The young German will come under such discipline easier than the free-born American, who is his own master, and will only allow his in- structor to go so far as the pupil himself thinks good for himself. This semi-military system takes away at once nearly all the drawbacks of the gym- nasium. Many ordinary exercises of indoor gymnastics involve no competition between the individuals. The Turner usually gains this by the use of the same exercises, whether with machines or not, in teams. The aim is to see how much better one section can do a given exercise than another. It is a difficult matter to so arrange gymnastic exer- cises as to always gain this advantage, which sports always have. Most gymnastic work is technically self-contained, requiring only the individual. It is a great thing to add the competitive element. A man gets some advantage in solitary exercise, but he tires of pulling one set of muscles after another as if he were a puppet and he himself were man- aging the strings. Once tired, neglect is sure to follow. The great advantage of a good gymnasium is that it contains apparatus for the exercise for every muscle in the body. Whatever the person's need, GYMNASIUM WORK. 43 which can be accurately determined by a modern physical professor, one can, if he does not object to the dull work, use just the right thing to just the right amount and in the quickest way. But like other medicine taking, it must be regarded as a duty and performed as such. The need of supervision in carrying out an ath- letic prescription is imperative to obtain full benefit from gymnastic work. As has been pointed out, one is apt to do the thing he can do best, which is just what he does not need to do. He needs devel- opment on his weak side. Supervision will prevent this. Without this supervision the gymnasium may produce deformity instead of curing it. If his arms and back are defective he needs the weights. If his arms are massive and his legs almost invisible he needs to run. As the Rev. Mr. Wadsworth says most forcibly : "In dealing with a giraffe it would be foolish to arrange movements to enlarge the neck. Nor is development of a don- key's ears or a peacock's tail necessary." If a person's occupation is not entirely sedentary, he may in his ordinary work get exercise in a par- ticular line but not in others. The needed exer- cises may be found in the gymnasium. Most people, the tailors and dressmakers tell us, have one shoulder higher than the other, or one leg shorter than the other, deformities due to certain habits. These can all be corrected in the gymnasiuqa, ^ 44 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. Tastes and needs in exercise differ. The gym- nasium can cater to all. Head-tired and muscle- tired people are diflferent classes. Head-tired people should have exercise involving recreation, in which the muscles are exercised and the brain rested. Muscle-tired people need only a change of exercise, preferably something in which the mind is not entirely at rest. In sports, this can be arranged by choosing the right kind ; in the gymnasium, the proper apparatus. Though night is not as good a time for exercise as day, some people can get no other. Night time is better than no time at all. To such the gymna- sium offers the advantage that it can be used when outdoor sports cannot, by night as well as day, and to that extent can increase the number benefited. The gymnasium can be used in connection with other athletics, not only as a means of getting into condition but to even up the effects of the cultiva- tion of specialties. This not only gives better health by the better general development, but it tends to better progress in the specialties. The runner is aided as a runner by practicing rowing, and the oarsman by long-distance running. Instead of the corresponding sport, the gymnastic apparatus giving the particular muscular motion desired may be used. Mr. Gladstone found a small private gymnasium, which he used regularly every morning, the greatest GYMNASIUM WORK. 45 help as a preparation for the most trying days in Parliament. On the mornings when he first intro- duced his most momentous bills into the House, he always spent an hour in his gymnasium, after which he bathed and ate a light breakfast. William Cul- len Bryant attributed the preservation of his intel- lectual and physical vigor to such advanced years, to a habit formed in early life of devoting the first hour or two after leaving his bed in the morning to moderate gymnastic exercise, the allowance of which he never reduced a particle to his eighty- fourth year. It should be borne in mind that all indoor gym- nastics should be subservient to outdoor exercise, in which alone the true exhilaration of exercise can be gained, and usually with the added help of recreation. p The Lighter Gymnastics, III. The lyiGHTER Gymnastics. In all systems alike the old form of heavy gym- nastics is dead. The heavy iron dumb-bells lie unused in a corner. The lifting of heavy weights is no longer the mark of an athlete. The attain- ment of great strength is useful at times. A strong, heavy, slow-motioned cart horse has his place as well as the more supple trotter, though the former is hardly considered so valuable. But we are not all needed in the capacity of piano movers. We find in daily life that quick, supple muscles are of more use than the hard muscle of the typical strong man. Exercises with heavy weights will develop power to a certain extent in certain people who are built for it, but they will not develop even strength so quickly as will light exercise, with light apparatus or without any. Heavy exercises are now considered injurious and incompatible with longevity. With heavy exer- cises there is greater liability to strain, which may last a lifetime. A man who aims for comparative softness and great flexibility of muscle, can sum- mon great strength when it is needed, and he will have endurance also. 4 (49) 50 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. There are various systems of light gymnastics which still use gymnastic apparatus, either for soli- tary workers or for classes, but they all involve lighter and more gradual muscle work than for- merly. More use is made of light wooden dumb- bells, bar-bells, wands and light clubs. This use is based on former systems of calisthenics which were originally considered only for women, but which have now been changed so as to be thought healthful meat for strong men. This kind of apparatus is most suitable for class work. The German Turners happily combine both light and heavier apparatus into their interesting system of drill with the best results, and by methods which keep the interest fully alive. They also use many free movements without apparatus. For those who have not the use of the more elaborate apparatus, there is the Swedish system in various modifications, using either light appara- tus, "which can be had or carried anywhere, or nothing whatever. A possible drawback is that this system is somewhat complicated, and when thorough savors a great deal of brain work added to the work of the body. Among the best systems of exercise entirely without apparatus is that of Mr. Checkley, who in his own person has shown very forcibly what can be accomplished on a very poor basis to start with. He makes use of nothing but what every THE LIGHTER GYMNASTICS. 51 man always has with him, his own body, discard- ing all artificial aids. Mr. Clieckley has invented a system of motions which any one can try, which at will can be made to exercise every muscle and to educate the whole system of a man. As an example, a special exercise for the develop- ment of the shoulders, with the muscles of the back and sides, is this: "Stand sideways near some vertical surface, like the wall of a room, at a point sufficiently distant to allow the hand when extended to easily touch the surface. [Fig. i.] Now move an inch further away and touch the surface again with- out altering the position of the feet, legs or pelvis. A second time move an inch, and this time there will be some difficulty in reaching. Repeat the movement until the surface cannot be reached, then do the same with the other arm and shoulder. The effort to reach will draw out and straighten the shoulders, and it will be discovered that the shoulders can be made to have a distinct lateral extension. ' ' Or, stand with the back to the wall and the arms extended, and make a ends of the second fingers when pencil mark at the the shoulders are 52 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. most contracted. Now reach out as far as possible each way, and the difference in reach will be found, at the end of a few of the exercises, to have steadily increased, and the shoulders will have developed." All exercises of the joints involve certain exer- cises of the muscles, but there are some that involve simply a relaxation of certain muscles with only sufficient tension in others to keep the body erect meanwhile. Such, for instance, is the use- ful exercise of this sys- tem for obtaining flex- ibility in the pelvic region or the region of the hips, as follows : ' ' Take the correct standing position, then relax the muscles so as to permit the whole weight of the body to fall on the left leg, al- lowing the right leg to bend and the right hip to sag down as far as it may. Now transfer this weight to right leg and allow the left hip to drop as loosely as possible. This would be a very bad position to stand in, but the exercise in trans- ferring the weight from one side of the pelvis to the other, gives increased flexibility and vigor to the muscles and ligaments of that region, and will give increased elasticity and endurance in walking. Fig. 2. — E)xercise in stooping, contract- ing the abdomen by muscular action, bending first the knees, then the hips, and then extending the should- ers for reaching. THE LIGHTER GYMNASTICS. 53 On the first occasion the exercise should be re- peated slowly and may last one or two minutes. After renewed practice it will be found easy to drop rapidly from one hip to the other without in- convenience, and to prolong the exercise for four or five minutes: "An exercise of a simple but effective character for giving flexibility of the spine is acquired in this way: After assuming the cor- rect standing position, extend the arms until the hands are brought on a level with the shoulders. Holding the arms and shoulders upon a straight line and keeping the arms directly opposite each other, as if actually held in position by a long pole passed across the back of the neck and held in position by the thumbs (this plan may be followed if desired), swing the arms and shoulders in unison, first in one direction and then in the other, until the line of the arms at the extreme tension of the swing is as nearly as possible at right angles with the first position. [Fig. 3.] Swing in this way at the rate of about twenty movements to the minute until the muscles of the shoulders and back feel tired. The greatest flexibility will be found in the upper region of the spine — a slight flexing of each FIG. 64 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE, strengthened. section of the vertebrae — giving an aggregate twist that will, with practice, become considerable. If the arms do not swing the shoulders with them the exercise will have little value. The hips should keep their natural positions and not swing with the shoulders. *' In the movement just described keep the face directed toward one point in front. By so doing the neck will be given some work and wall be To further strengthen the neck — and a development of the neck muscles will prevent many a headache that arises from no - other cause but muscular fatigue — staifd with the back against the wall. Without moving any part of the back or shoulders away from the wall, move the head forward and back a num- ber of times, keeping the face on the same vertical line as when the back of the head touches the wall. Then practice the side to side movement of the head without altering the vertical line. [Fig. 4.] In this second movement it will be found very difficult at the beginning not to roll the head, but be content with a slight movement at the outset, and in time it will be found possible to oscillate the head several inches without altering the vertical line." THE LIGHTER GYMNASTICS. 55 These and many other exercises for other pur- poses go to make up the system. They can all be used at any time and place. While some of them tax considerably the agility of the muscles, none of them are violent. The use of such exercises will give a perfect familiarity with and mastery of all the muscles of the body. When this has been accomplished a man may, if he has the time and feels the necessity, be ready for heavier athletic training. These exercises awaken the muscular system and give it readiness. It will be found that if such training is carefully advanced, a much heavier strain on the muscles than would be sup- posed may be met with ease should there be unex- pected need. These exercises, which are types of what can be done in the way of exercising without apparatus, should now be contrasted with the best system of class work of which the Turner drill is a type. This system cannot be studied at a public exhibi- tion, for then only the best pupils are shown, and mostly at fancy work. To understand it, it is necessary to drop in casually on a Turiigemeinde class at the ordinary exercises. If the class at work happens to be composed of the youngest pupils it will be found to be the more interesting. As you enter the gymnasium you will see probably as many as seventy little fellows drawn up loosely in two lines. They are in plain flannel 56 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE, suits and slippers. Their ages will range from per- haps six to fourteen years. Discipline is main- tained, and some other features of military drill are insisted upon. The exercises will begin with march- ing, in which the natural, robust and well-devel- oped little figures show to advantage. The first rudiments of the course to beginners, even the smallest, include the "setting up " of the figure as in militaiy work. The marching is not simply military marching, but includes the formation of some figures, something after the fashion of a grand march at a ball. The marching also includes the accenting of the step, first with the left foot, which at word of command changes to the right. After- ward every other step is accented by a slight blow with the foot on the floor which, by reason of the large number, is very marked, even in slippers. Then every fourth step is marked, then every sixth and every eighth. Ordinary quick time, which will be the usual use with such young pupils, is suddenly changed to the double-quick at word of command without losing a step or throwing a single pupil out of time. The pupils may perhaps be marched into circles, counted off for double formation, and at the word the alternates step back a pace, thus giving each plenty of space for bodily exercises. A model boy who knows the work is put into each circle. Ordin- ary motions of all parts of the body are gone through s THE LIGHTER GYMNASTICS. 57 empty -handed, including finally sitting on the floor, lying down flat on the back and raising the body again with the hands on the hips without letting the elbows touch the floor. The body is also brought to a squatting position, from which it is thrown onto the support of the hands on the floor in addition to the feet, without the knees touching. While in this position, in which the class looks like so many frogs, the legs are suddenly thrown out to full length back- ward, the belly down, leaving the weight supported by the toes and hands only. From this position the former one must be recovered without touching the knees to the floor. An occasional failure leads to some amusement, which is not frowned down, though even without that the boys seem to enjoy the sport hugely. Anything like mischief is nipped in the bud. The offending boy is placed in a corner to stand at the will of the instructor, from which the pupil never rebels, perhaps with a wand through his elbows. For grave offence, he may stand until the end of the lesson, when he is dismissed with the information that his parents, usually his ' ' Vater, ' ' will be seen about it. Such exercises are not all that tend to keep up interest. After awhile when the class must needs rest, the boys are told off into squads or detach- ments, each of which does an exercise while the others rest. Possibly on this occasion two dozen large wooden rings are placed on the floor at the 58 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. ends of the gymnasium. Twelve are placed at one end, say three feet apart, and fifty feet away at the other end, are similarly placed the other twelve. Inside of each of the rings that are at one end of the gymnasium are stood two very slim Indian clubs, the equilibrium of which is easily upset. Twelve little fellows are stationed at the ends where the clubs are, with a hand on one of each pair of clubs. At the word all twelve boys race with a club, stand it inside the vacant ring opposite, race back for the other club, which must be put beside the first. It often happens that by the time the boy has returned for the second club, he sees that the first one has tumbled over, when he must return and right it before he brings the second. He must attend to but one at a time. The first boy of the twelve to complete the task is the winner of that trial heat, and is told off for a final test with other similar winners. In like manner twelve swinging poles, about six- teen feet long, will be hooked to the ceiling, and twelve boys will race for them at word of command, catch them on the fly, take one arm's lift up the pole, grip it with hands and feet and swing for a certain time. After this has been tried by all, to give the method of climbing, the poles will be caught from a position of rest and the boys will try to climb to the top of each. Those who cannot climb far drop off and fail. Those who have not FIG. 5.— re;sui,ts of the; turner syste;m. THE LIGHTER GYMNASTICS. 59 learned the foot-hold and try to work with the arms only, necessarily fail. The first at the top in every trial heat makes another trial with similar winners. By this time the boys have probably had as much exercise at one time as the instructor thinks good for them. At the word the line is formed, and they march out on the way to the dressing room, with a hearty "Adieu" (for the thorough- going German is French in his farewell) from each boy to the instructor as he reaches the doorway. This order of exercises, if that is the lesson for that day and week, will be used with certain altera- tions for the small-girl classes, for older girls and women, for the junior classes of young men, and for the older men. During the course of a season the lessons will lead up to what we see done by a few experts at an exhibition. It is easy to see, with such a system in general use in Germany, where the German army gets its good material. It took hard, self-sacrificing work on the part of the founder of the system to make it popular, so that the people would take part in it, further it, submit to the discipline and send their children, but the benefit once shown it was easily kept up. The fathers and mothers who have learned the benefits wish them for their children. In this country love of fatherland and its customs, which is so strong in the German, helps to foster it. As here prac- ticed it is combined with the social German club 60 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. or Verein. The Turner celebration and festival are features, and from these the Frau and Fraulien are not excluded, nor home life entirely overlooked. The Turner system, though conservative, has felt the change in modern gymnastics. It has also discarded much heavy work and substituted light, quick motions, giving suppleness rather than strength. So useful has the system become, that in Germany it has been made a part of army drill itself. In the illustration [Fig. 5] we have three active German Turners, taken as average examples only, representing three diverse classes. The models are aged 13, 21 and 53, and their physical develop- ment comes mainly from the exercise gained in the Turner gymnasium. The older man is actively engaged in a very sedentary occupation — is in fact a shoemaker, while the younger man has as little chance for exercise in his daily occupation, being an engraver, and always working while seated. One would not think so to look at the picture. Surely it is a good showing for the system. Contrast now the picture [Fig. 6] of a man who must needs have much exercise in his daily toil, as he is a blacksmith and is necessarily quite strong. His malformation of back and contracted chest come from want of care during exercise. The exercise was misapplied and has done harm rather than good. A gymnasium or Turner drill FIG. 6. ~A BLACKSMITH. THE LIGHTER GYMNASTICS. 61 in connection with the daily toil would have pre- vented the injury, or, the injury once accom- plished, would have done much to remedy it. We will now suppose that our athletic patient, who has been persuaded to try gymnastic work for his health, through the advice of some friend or his doctor, or on the recommendation of some worthy book, has tried solitary exercising, or as much of a class drill as he can get in an ordinary American gymnasium. If he is a young man and if the instructor has the knack of helping to amuse him, he has probably stuck to it more or less regularly for awhile, and has then tired of the monotony. If he is an older man, he has probably stuck to it doggedly to the end, determined to get all the good there is. At the end of the allotted time he prob- ably allows the idea to enter his mind that he is slightly tired of it. The younger man says boldly: ' ' Why did not the doctor prescribe so many games of ball instead of this infernal nonsense ? ' ' The older man may admit that he would not object if he could get his exercise with a little more recrea- tion mixed with it. When he gets this idea, he commences to look around before taking another course in gymnastics. Breathing. IV. Breathing. Before looking into the subject of exercises which include recreation, it would be well to con- sider an important matter, without attention to which exercise at any time may not only be of no value but be positively harmful. After all, to get breath into the body— breath, composed of good healthy unspoiled air and plenty of it — is^the end and object of exercise. The importance of this cannot be overestimated. Food, the proper action of the heart, strong muscles are all good, but without proper breath of what avail are they. Man may exist for many days without a particle of food, but cannot live many minutes without breathing. All living organisms, plants as well as beings, must have air. It must be in sufficient quantity and of the right kind. In athletics, muscular power is secondary and sub- servient to respiratory power. As without breath- ing we cease to exist, so in proportion as we do not breath properly we cease to exist properly. The end and object of exercise is to assist the body in changing its formation. There is a con- ^ (65) 66 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. tinual breaking down of old tissue and building up of new, which comprises healthy life. In breath- ing we take in what we need and give off what we are done with. It is of no use to take exercise which will en- large muscle if we do not allow the proper appar- atus to supply the proper food with which the muscle is to be built up. We should see to it that the apparatus is sufficiently developed, kept in order, and watched carefully. Neglect of such precaution is the worst kind of neglect. It is starvation, for air is food. It may be well to remember that four-fifths of all the elements which go to make a perfect body come from the air. The importance of breathing is acknowledged by many, but the way of doing it is left very indefi- nite. It is thought that if the muscles of the chest are developed it is all that is necessary to secure enough air. But the muscles of the chest may be developed without the lungs, as a fine boat may be built with a small or unsafe boiler. Superficial ideas on training, even to-day, produce large-chested ath- letes who are easily winded. A buyer of fast horses seldom makes a mistake of that kind. He looks to the wind first as a prime requisite of excellence of speed or endurance. The horse must have big lungs, not big chest muscles, and they must be in perfect order. BREATHING. 67 The chest should be developed from the inside by the action and growth of the lungs. Supposing that your attention is now gained and that you appreciate the need, what do you do to obtain the use of enough good air ? Possibly you take to long breathing as an exer- cise. You fill your lungs quickly with as much air as you can force into them. After the lungs are packed as full as they can hold, you try to force in more. You shut the gates and try to hold it there as long as you can. Perhaps, j^our chest thus extended, you pound upon it with your fists like an angry gorilla on his abdomen. After you have held the air as long as possible, until you are blue in the face perhaps, and your eyes stand out with the strain, you let it out suddenly. Then you look to your instructor for approbation and encour- agement. Perhaps you get it. But is that the way the physically perfect primeval man breathed ? Not at all. You have been doing a very bad thing. You have been straining, and that is a terrible fault in anything connected with physical training. What you need is regular and deep breathing, from the lungs, not from the diaphragm below the lungs which should have but a limited share in the action of breathing. In this breathing for exercise the air should be inhaled slowly, if not at violent exercise, which demands more entrance and exit room, through the 68 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. nose only. According to some it should then be exhaled as slowly, according to others a better effect is gained by exhaling with force from the lungs by mouth and nose what has been inhaled slowly through the nose only, thus giving a stronger exercise to the muscles affecting the movement of the lungs. Certain vocal teachers insert a small quill in the mouth and teach to breath only so fast as the air can get in and out through that-sized opening. This is not so good for the reason that, if possible, the breathing should be done through the natural channel, the nose, which contains natural apparatus for straining impurities from the air and taking the chill from it before it enters the lungs. Those w^ho habitually breath through the mouth at all times are subject to many forms of pulmonary and throat diseases. lyong, slow, deep breaths, taken evenly, with fore- thought, and done consciously for a short time daily, can do a great deal of good. They can be inhaled at intervals during the day without entering a gymnasium or making special preparations. If the clothing is as it should be, so as not to inter- fere, the breathing can be done while walking, while standing, while waiting, while climbing a stairway, premising that the air is proper (it is best done in the open air if possible), and the person is not in too much of a hurry. Proper distention of the lungs cannot be gained hurriedly, nor can any BREATHING. 69 exercise be properly done in that way. When the body is at rest not more than ten breaths to a min- ute is the normal rate, increasing during exercises. The aim when exercising should be to keep the respirations as slow as possible consistent with com- fort and absence of strain, and not to empty the lungs too much. At first this slow full breathing will have to be done consciously by an effort. But the habit once gained it will continue. In proportion as it is gained come strength and endurance. It is a curious fact that the stronger animals are the slower in breathing, possibly on account of their size. The elephant, which breathes perhaps six times a minute, is stronger than the mouse, which breathes over a hundred times. Proper breathing alone can add not only strength but years to a man's life~~; The choice of proper food for the stomach is a necessity to health. It must nourish the body and supply blood, which is the fuel which the engine must have to do the work. Without proper breath- ing all the food in the world can do no good in nourishing the blood. In fact, good food becomes bad food if it is not affected in the right way by the air in the lungs. There can be no perfect circula- tory apparatus without lung power. Without good circulation there is no properly nourished blood. Without nourished blood there is nothing to keep the digestive apparatus going. 70 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. Hence, it is not strange to find that deep, regular, normal breathing is a most effective cure for dys- pepsia. The absence of such breathing is often the primary cause of such complaint. If the food is improper either in quantity or quality there can be but poor assimilation. The quality is improper without good breathing. In proportion as we are heavy eaters we need more exercise, and exercise to be exercise must include correct breathing. As a preventive of consumption or a cure for pul- monary complaints, this exercise of breathing is invaluable. But it should be employed properly. If not, it may become the cause of just such diseases. A good style of breathing, if a normal position of the body is maintained during the exercise, can frequently be acquired by the study of vocal music under a competent master. By paying attention to the requirements of health even chorus singing can be made beneficial. Too frequently a master knows only rules for the production of tone without regard to health. Under intelligent direction, strain of course always prohibited, solo singing will surely produce normal breathing and development of the lungs, and with them the chest and chest muscles. Gymnastic exercises could not do better in certain lines. The same effect may be had from the playing of wind instruments. We often notice the great chest development of some clarionet, cornet, saxhorn or tuba player. How is it, then, that these i BREATHING. 71 players often succumb to pulmonary disease ? For one thing, because their lives are irregular, and therefore their bodies are not normally healthy throughout; for another, because there has been strain. This strain is most common with poor or inexperienced players, who do not know how to blow their instruments, using unnecessary force. More often it is because the instrument is played and the lungs exercised while the body is in a cramped and unnatural position, when the lungs are not free. Under such circumstances the very exercise which develops the lungs becomes a source of danger to them as they develop. If the player had not exercised at all he would have lived longer. The use of deep, regular breathing is of particu- lar value when the air is unexceptionally pure, on mountain top or at sea, for instance. In such places we cannot well help getting some invigorating effect without attention on our part, for the air itself tempts to such exercise. Under vSuch circumstances we are surprised at our abnormal appetite, which is produced entirely by the breathing. Balloonists tell us that a ravenous appetite is one of the pecu- liar effects of an ascension. In all such cases the true rule of athletics, mod- eration, still holds good. It is better to eat too little than too much. And when the incentive is over, when we go back to ordinary air, the same supply of fuel cannot be utilized without discomfort. We must not expect it. Equestrianism, O t- V. Equestrianism. Probably the next thing which the seeker after physical improvement will consider, particularly if he is of middle age, after he tires of systematic gymnastic work, either with apparatus or without, will be the purchase of a horse, that is, if he is pos- sessed of the requisite means. There is a charm about horsemanship which the physically needy man discovers from afar. It seems to show such excellent results, with a minimum of exertion and a maximum of pleasure. Its practice appeals to the picturesque. It promises either solitude or genial companionship, with change of scene at will. It has been laid down as a maxim that riding is the best exercise for regaining health, and that walking is the best for retaining it. In that case we need both riding and walking. Even so. We need an all-round athletic development for health. Anything that develops only a portion should not be practiced exclusively. Those who take the view that riding is not an all-round exercise, claim that it is only those whose sluggish digestion needs a good shaking up that find great benefit in it, but (75) 76 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. that as an exercise of the muscles of the arms for instance, except when on a very headstrong horse, it is nil. Of course it is not a violent exercise for the arms, but the arms are in motion with some resistance, at least as much as in bicycle riding. But if we look at it in the light that all exercise is simply the means of getting the best air into the body in the greatest quantity and with the greatest effect, the shaking up is of great service, for full breathing must result from it. Riding does, in the most effectual way, strengthen, by exercise, the stomach, liver and intestines. There is an invention by means of which a dys- peptic patient can, with his arms, use levers attached to the side of the chair which he occupies so as to agitate the seat and shake himself up, in exact simulation of horseback motion on a trotting horse. Riding can be indulged in extensively or not according to inclination or strength. It is less tiresome to the lower limbs than walking, as the horse, not the limbs, carry the weight of the body for the greater part of the time. Persons in weak health can enjoy moderate horseback exercise with- out pain or difficulty. If the true secret of healthful exercise is to so arrange the exercises of the body and mind that they serve as relaxations for each other, then a brisk trot in the pure air of an early summer day FIG. 7. EQUESTRIANISM. 77 previous to beginning a day's work well fills the bill. Those who have experienced the exhilara- tion and exquisite refreshment of such a course can testify in its favor. To gain the best effect the exercise must have some approach to regularity, not, however, the regularity of a certain learned judge, with more money than time, who felt the need of just such exercise. He purchased a good saddle horse, and regularly on every Sunday morning before break- fast, no matter whether it were winter or summer, a baking day or a sleeting hurricane, he and the horse were to be seen returning homeward from the ride at a certain fixed hour. The exercise was regular, certainly. No one could gainsay that. But every other morning of the seven found him in his study without the exercise. This would hardly give the rider even a chance to attain a comfortable seat. Certainly advantage gained in the one day would have sufficient time to be over- come in the other six. In Mr. Dollman's picture, '' Warranted Quiet," an English clergyman is dickering with a jockey for the purchase of a driving horse. I^eaving the horse out of the question, in the two figures of the contracting parties who stand talking [Fig. 7], the artist has admirably hit the popular idea of the dif- ference in the physical culture of the two classes of men. If there is any truth in the picture, and it FIG. 8. FIG. 9. EQUESTRIANISM. 79 will be found to be correct to a greater or less degree in comparison with actual life, it would indicate that there is some virtue in horsemanship as the means of physical development. The horse- man's figure is erect, well developed, and has a strong firm carriage of the head, showing well- developed neck muscles. In this case the arms certainly show strength. The wide-apart position of the legs and feet which suggests the position in the saddle, gives a stand about as easily shaken as a rock. The figure is well developed, showing hearty eating and ability to digest a sufficient quantity of nourishing food, which could only be the case if a sufficient quantity of air had been con- sumed in the lungs. Though the back is toward the spectator, its broad expanse gives promise of ample lung power within. In the other figure, that of the shallow-chested, stooping, weak-limbed, illy-developed clergyman, the n an whose home is in a study and not in the open air, there is strong contrast. Now compare the figures of these same two men as they would appear physically if drawn without drapery, as shown in Fig. 8. The effect is startling, yet it is not beyond the truth. We are so accustomed to the effect of drapery that we do not notice the form beneath. We venture to say that if we should secure the nude photograph of an average busi- ness man of to-day and place it against a similar 80 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. photograph of a trained athlete, the effect would be as startling. I^et us see. We have in Fig. 9, life studies of two figures, one a man who has been a professional athlete, and the other a person from ordinary life of somewhat similar figure to that of the unathletic student. The second figure only differs from the student in this particular. Though the life model is a deformed person by reason of his daily occupation, that occupation was one requiring strength, not one needing no strength as in the case of the parson. The deformed figure is that of a strong man. The exercise which produced the strength was wrongly applied, was taken in improper ways. Even at the same employment, more care would have given much better results. We furthermore venture to say that if the aver- age business man referred to, were even a person interested in athletics, which usually means only as a spectator, be he bank clerk, lawyer, book- keeper, merchant, or what not, the clergyman's figure will be very near the type. Any man may examine this statement for himself. This wrong development would be due, not only to want of exercise, but to want of outdoor life. It is sometimes counted sufficient, particularly in fashionable life, to take winter horseback exercise in the ring for a certain fixed amount of time. Ring riding should be considered simply preparation PERSIAN HORSEMANSHIP— DARIUS SAI^UTED AS KING OF PERSIA. 82 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. to learn the art, the aim being to gain the open later, whether winter or summer. Fashionable riding in any event in most localities, usually confines itself to spring and fall. In winter it is too cold or otherwise unsuitable, in summer too hot. The art, learned only because it is the cor- rect thing to do, does not amount to much in phy- sical development. An important point in favoi of riding is that it should take one away from the crowded city, with its polluted air and fashionable life, for a time at least. Bicycle riding gives the exercise of horseback riding to but a limited extent. Those who can afford it should take the living horse in preference, even if he does cost to keep, and tires at times. The peculiar shaking up which he gives will well repay the outlay in a better condition of the whole physical system. To get the best results you must have a liking for the exercise and for the animal. Timidity has no place in the saddle. Few outdoor amusements apparently seem so full of danger to life and limb, and so it is, without pluck. If timid, better let riding alone. The hours of exercise will be hours of torture, both to yourself and horse. Again, a proper selection of horse must be made. With the Persian method of riding, as seen in the figure of Darius on page 8i, may be contrasted the method of the Grecian horsemen on page 83, from the frieze of the Temple of Minerva in the Acropolis at Athens. 84 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. All horses are not saddle horses, even as all men are not riders. The horse must suit the man, his weight and other requirements, as much as a cycle must fit. Again, the saddle must fit both horse and rider, giving an equal distribution of the weight; and the bridle the horse. A good saddle horse with a poor bit becomes a poor saddle horse. As this is not a textbook, we cannot go into details, but the whole art as well as the grace of it is summed up in this couplet : Your head and your heart keep boldly up, Your hands and your heels keep down, Your legs keep close to your horse's sides And your elbows close to your own. Rising in the saddle, merely as a matter of exer- cise, is excellent, and is the only safe way to ride a heavy trotter. It has the advantage of adding cer- tain muscles to the list of those exercised in riding, and prevents all danger of anurism or rupture from riding heavy-gaited horses. By this means the gait can be tempered at will. Riding has been found of value to sufferers from both physical and mental ailments. It is a great aid in re-establishing the health of one who is broken down by study or the cares of his business. Consumption in the early stages, general debility, The figure on page 85, from a rare engraving, is a likeness of a certain noted character, and might be said to represent riding for pleasure in 1814. 86 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. insomnia and certain kinds of niuscnlar and nervous aiFections yield readily to the healthful effects of the exercise. Nothing is so efficacious in breaking up a cold as a brisk ride. Of course any one afflicted with an organic disease which would prohibit such a thing, cannot enjoy it beneficially. Riding is so different from all other forms of exercise that it has a field of its own. In certain ways it is never exactly alike on two different occasions. As a relaxation the very nature of the exercise at once takes a man out of himself. The mere fact of his being seated in the saddle, reins in hand, turns his thoughts into a new direction. Troubles are forgotten, both real and imaginary. Some- thing new each day engages the attention of the mind. In a certain sense the horse is doing the work and the man is getting the exercise. If any man doubts, let him make an experiment. Suppose he is worried about a certain thing and wishes to consider it thoroughly. In place of lock- ing himself in a room to brood over it, going over and over the same reasons, the same questions and answers, without reaching any solution of the dif- ficulty, let him take it out with him on horseback. It cannot be guaranteed that when he returns the difficulty will have been overcome, but it will have disappeared. He has left it behind. Who ever heard of taking one's troubles to ride with him? DOWN IN FRONT. Reproduced by permission of I^ouis A. KeiUch. EQUESTRIANISM. 87 But it is possible to get on your horse and ride away from tliem. They will go with you if you have a spare seat in a buggy. After the ride they may not have changed any, but you will find that you do not care which way they are settled. At all events you can now consider them without so much mental fatigue, and your mind and judgment are in better condition to reach a satisfactory conclusion. As a direct influencer of disease, horseback riding, properly done, has great value. If the blood is too great in quantity and too rich in quality, causing distention of the capillaries, turgid veins and obesity, horseback riding is a corrective. The tendency to the development of an excessive amount of fat can be corrected by riding, coupled with moderation and diet. In ladies, young girls especially, this is the proper remedy for embonpomt^ not acid drink or drugs which by disturbing the general health not only reduce the fat but do away with beauty as well. If the complaint is the poorness of blood, thin in quality and little of it, again riding is a remedy. The pale colorless face, languidness, and general debility are the marks of such a complaint, and if unchecked they will soon be followed by serious results. Diseases of the nervous system, the brain and spinal column, namely, hypochondriasis, hysteria, chorea, etc., are amenable to this exercise. For 88 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. such use the rides must be short and the horse easy gaited. Early morning is the best time and the exercise should never be prolonged enough to induce fatigue. Horseback exercise is the greatest antidote for that most dreaded, most wearisome and most com- mon ailment of nervous, brain-worked people, in- somnia. It is the best curative agent known, and insomnia once cured by regular daily horseback riding, the cure remains, even though it may be necessary to discontinue the exercise. As to the aid given in the early stages of consump- tion, which aid is genuine, the good results come more than anything else from the enforced regular breathing of pure air, and are beneficial in so far as the health and strength of the lungs are built up with the rest of the system, and to the extent that strain is avoided. This form of cure is usually begun by the patient sitting on a horse which is lead by a groom at a very slow walk. As the patient improves and the afternoon's hectic flush gives place to the morning bloom in his cheeks, the exercise is increased until the chest expands, the muscles develop, the appetite comes again, the cough disappears and with it the night sweats. Many such cures are matter of record and the wit- nesses are now living. But greater results have been obtained not from curing the sick, but by keeping men well. Dr. EQUESTRIANISM. 89 Holmes says, "The outside of a horse is good for the inside of a man," not necessarily as horse flesh food, however. Horseback exercise is hard on food, for the processes of digestion and assimilation are at once put upon their best footing with the rider. Whoever got off a saddle after a good ride without feeling hungry? In the trial of health against disease a change of venue is of value at times. Transfer the trial from the sick room to the saddle and open air, where all the surroundings are not prejudiced against the prisoner and leagued against allowing him to escape. Equestrianism for ladies will always be popular so far as means will allow, and it would be more practiced if more attention were called to it. One recommendation in the eyes of the sex is possibly in the fact that nowhere else will a woman's charms be so apparent as on horseback. Many a plain woman on foot looks truly queenlike in the saddle. Most women think that to own a habit with other paraphernalia, and to have the ability to sit a gentle horse is all that is necessary. They must have what they call a ladies' horse, which is a horse that can canter and canter only. For exercise this is just what she does not want, for then all she has to do is to control her horse while sitting passive. She should learn to ride a trotter. She needs the motion and she should use her muscles in breaking the jar of the horse's gait. 90 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. One great objection to horseback riding for ladies as at present practiced, particularly for ladies with weak spines or those prone to lateral curvature of the spine, is the use of the side saddle. While using the side saddle the spine is curved laterally or rather twisted [Fig. lo] and always to the same side. A healthful woman can stand the strain with- out injury while doing a moderate amount of riding, for the reason that she alternates with other positions when not on horseback. But to one who is compelled to be in a saddle habitually it may be very harmful, and those compelled to do so invari- ably adopt means of meeting the difficulty which are not so strictly in accordance with the regula- tions of polite society. I^adies' saddles have been made double and also reversible so that they can be ridden on either side. The rider may then alternate and not only avoid injury but fatigue as well. If a double saddle or a reversible saddle is too clumsy, inventive genius is equal to producing a light serviceable reversible saddle. There is, however, no earthly reason why a man's saddle cannot be used by women, save that it is not the fashion. Young girls who take to horse- back riding naturally, where they have the facili- ties in country homes, find that cross riding, which they copy from the way their brothers ride, is far more comfortable than the ladies' way. Were they ^ 4»A V- FIG. lO.— POSITION OF THE SPINAI. COI^UMN IN SIDE- SADDI^E RIDING. EQUESTRIANISM. 91 allowed to ride so, it would not be necessary to prohibit them the use of a horse at a certain age when they complain of pains in the spine. In these days of equestrian tights, bisected skirts, short riding habits and leggings, it is not impossible to devise a habit which would meet all require- ments of modesty, as well as grace, and allow the use of a cross-saddle. The same cry was raised against the short riding skirt, when it was first introduced in place of the very dangerous long habit. We have also had outcry against immodest women who rode tricycles. Now behold we have modest and graceful women riding not tricycles, but bicycles, who would be no more out of place if riding a horse man-fashion. On the ground of safety alone this method often has necessarily to be adopted by women in certain dangerous locali- ties. The seat is so much more secure. Says the Medical Record : "The popularity of bicycle riding among women has made it more possible for women to accept the idea of riding en cavalier., an idea which is being put in actual prac- tice. In other words, cross-saddle riding with divided skirts has gained a certain amount of recog- nition in a number of localities. It has been found that ladies look well, ride more safely and get better exercise in the new way. There has been a vague idea that any other method of riding by ladies than by side-saddle would be injurious. 92 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. As a matter of fact the practice of using the side- saddle has been adopted because it adapts itself to modern dress, and because without a special dress no other method would be suitable. But cross- saddle riding is the safer way. It permits of a better and freer use of the limbs and makes the exercise more effective. All this will not make women adopt it, however. A large number of lady riders take the exercise to avoid the unpleasant effects of too much fat. Side-saddle riding does not make fat women thin, however, but, if anything, enlarges the hips. Cross-saddle riding is more effective, because a wider range of muscles can be used and harder riding indulged in." The style of riding by ladies with cross-saddle is already well established on the Pacific coast. It turns out to be, after all, like most new fashions, only an old mode revived. In the early days all women used the cross-saddle, and they might be riding in the same way still but for an accident of fortune. It appears that one Anna, of Bohemia, wife of an English king, invented the side-saddle, not from any delicate repulsion to the mode in vogue, but because she was afflicted with some deformity which made it impossible for her to ride upon the saddles in common use — and riding for women was imperative in those days. Ever since then women have been trying to believe themselves safe and comfortable on the side-saddle in the heavv I EQUESTRIANISM. 93 skirts which invariably catch in the pommel with most disastrous results in case of accident. They have reduced the long-flowing skirts to a short, scant petticoat, reaching only to the stirrup. To the women of the Pacific slope a horseback ride means something besides a little spin in the park followed by a groom, when decorum rather than enjoyment is the chief point. The Western woman goes half a day's journey for her ride; she clears fences and gates, she picks her way along perilous trails, where it is necessary to make it as easy for her horse as possible, as well as to have a sure seat and a comfortable position herself. Some years ago a San Francisco horsewoman, and an accomplished rider, began to ask herself why she was so weary and exhausted when she went with her husband for long rides from which he returned refreshed and rested. She decided that it was because the heavy skirt hampered her, and while he could raise himself in his stirrups when the road was rough, she, in her unnatural and cramped position, was obliged to take all the jolts. Accordingly, the woman experimented with a riding costume until she found one that enabled her to sit her horse in what she considered a rational manner. When she first put it on she discovered that it was not pleasant to be a pioneer in any movement. She wore her divided skirts and rode in her man's saddle for the first three months only 94 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. after dark. When she first appeared in daylight small boys made audible remarks and larger boys said nothing, but kept up a good deal of thinking. Finally sense prevailed over prejudice and the majority decided that they did like it very much indeed. The strong argument that prevailed with the fathers and brothers and husbands of women riders was the added safety of the method. The woman who rides astride has some hold on her horse and some support from her stirrups, argue the supporters of the new movement, and does not come tumbling off like a lump of lead if her horse shies. The cross-saddle riders become equally developed in figure, and the right foot, which grows weaker than the left with much side-saddle riding, becomes strong again. Stout women reduce their flesh symmetrically in the man's saddle, be- sides enjoying the exercise with no fear of falling Then the new mode of riding is much more quickly learned than the old, consequently the riding mas ters do not think the new mode graceful or modest, With the livery stable keepers it is different, They are all enthusiastically in favor of cross-saddle riding, because it makes a world of difference with the horses. Almost any day a dozen ladies may be seen riding the man's saddle in the man's fashion in the public park at San Francisco. In Alameda and Oakland there are also a considerable contin- gent of riders, for the small places seem best pm^ #• f' EQUESTRIANISM. 95 adapted for cross-saddle riding, as there is more freedom and less comment. Among the Oakland riders there is one young woman who has the unique distinction of being one of the few women who ride en cavalier without a saddle at all. She learned to ride in this way in the mountains, and continues the practice in the city. Her horse 'wears simply a blanket, with the stirrups strapped on over it. California girls are the best and most fearless riders in the country. They take to the saddle as a duck to water. There are divided skirts kept constantly for hire at the stables in the Yosemite Valley, and ladies not accustomed to rid- ing are strongly recommended to use the man's sad- dle as being safer and less fatiguing for the trails, lyadies who are accustomed to side-saddle riding declare unanimously in favor of the cross-saddle for the hard riding, after making the trial. The well-known rider. Miss Hutchinson, of Den- ver, who rode in the thousand mile race from Chadron, Neb., to the World's Fair at Chicago, at the average rate of fifty miles a day, always adopts cross-saddle riding when out rounding up stock or on the trail, as she did in the thousand-mile race. When in town she rides an ordinary side-saddle, in which it would not be possible to manage the vicious horses which she dares to ride when on the plains. Miss Hutchinson has on several occasions covered 450 miles in seven days using relays of horses, riding a cross-saddle. 96 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. In some of our Eastern cities we now begin to see ladies in cross-saddles, and even the boys are beginning to get accustomed to the sight. It is a question whether the cross-saddle illustrations here given as novelties will not soon cease to command notice, on account of the frequent appearance of such figures in public. The costume for such riding first proposed in Germany, where cross-saddle riding for ladies was suggested many years ago, consisted of turkish trousers, covered by a kind of ulster, which was divided in the middle. It was buttoned up while walking, and appeared like any other ulster [Fig. 1 1]. But in the saddle it could be thrown apart and the front and back buttoned together on the sides by a single button, to hold it open [Fig. 12]. This was, however, a clumsy arrangement and was not popular. It was worn by a few reformers in Berlin, and was tried in Hyde Park, London. It has also been seen in Central Park, New York. The costume worn by lady cross-saddle riders of to-day usually consists of equestrian tights, any sort of shoe and cloth gaiters to the knee. Over the tights is worn a divided skirt, full enough to hang gracefully, and of the same cloth and material as the outside garment. This skirt is walking length and is worn with a blouse of India silk in summer and cloth in winter. If the skirt is made full enough, and of walking length, it can be worn EQUESTRIANISM. 97 when dismounted without special comment, though an ulster has been worn with it, made somewhat similar to that shown in Fig. ii. We have spoken of the charm of companionship in riding, not in- deed necessarily on the same ani- mal. Many a fel- low-man s i m i - larly situated can be found, who will turn his horse's head in the same direc- tion as yours. The crowning charm of riding is in the making of long tours through the country by easy stages in com- pany, though they are agreeable even alone. Hunting meets or bag hunting may not be very desirable as moderate regular exercise. As for horse racing, that is not athletics at all. For the jockey it is hard and injurious work with great risks. 98 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. If you want to get your horseback exercise cheap, and at the same time get the maximum of exercise, do your own grooming and caring for the horse. To be at the beck and call of a horse for any great number of days, is equivalent to being worked by the hour at a gymnastic machine. There must be regularity. The horse will not hear of anything else. There is no let up to it. Then indeed one seems to tire of the regularity. A fault in horseback riding is that as a man profits by the exercise he grows lazy. He no longer wishes to take the trouble to ride regularly. It is too much exertion. He makes the excuse that he would like to take his wife along sometimes without keeping two horses and without the trouble of preparation for the ride. On this plea he buys a buggy. It is but slight additional expense he says, as he has the animal. So he takes to driving. He does not get so much exercise as on horseback, but it may perhaps be as well to let well enough alone. He had better by far do that than not go out at all. But as the physical benefit of this occupation is due solely to the fact that it takes him out of doors, and not to the exercise, it will not be considered here but under the head of " Out-Door Life." FIG. 12. Cycling. VI. Cycling. It is more than likely that if a live horse is unat- tainable, the would-be equestrian, even of mature age, will consider the physical improvement claims of a bicycle. As to the question of the expense of the latter, though the first cost is not small, the terms are made to suit, and the charges for keep are light. Doctors' bills for the repair of broken cycle bones are an item in the maintenance of this horse that stands without hitching, that never tires nor feeds, and does not run away; the worst he can do being to lie down under his rider. Medi- cal charges for care of bruised and broken cyclists themselves have decreased since the death of the high wheel. It is to be said in favor of cycle acci- dents, however, that cyclists as a class, being in prime physical condition, have stood the wear and tear of cycle experiments remarkably well. The cycle is a compromise between a carriage and legs, as a man's legs are themselves a com- promise to adapt themselves to varying require- ments. It is hard to suit all wants. We have never been able to make a walking motor success- fully. The tendency is to wheels. The wheels (103) lOi ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. do what legs cannot under certain conditions. A man made with wheels instead of legs would be an improvement under certain circumstances; under others he would be a failure. His legs have to do his work more or less perfectly under all conditions. He can advance with them under entirely opposite conditions, on land and in water. They are not especially made for speed, but they will carry either on a level or on rough ground, in a swamp or up a mountain-side. A cycle can be used in connection with a man's legs to bet- ter advantage only under one c o n d i - tion, over a mod- erately even road. If the conditions are favorable the cycle can far exceed the speed of legs alone. But let the cycle try to work up a steep hillside, in underbrush, or on moorland, and it is a failure. It has been estimated that one person out of one hundred and eighty inhabitants of the United States now owns or rides a bicycle. If we come to examine how this result was brought about, we shall probably be compelled to admit that it was due not so much to inherent excellence in the exercise itself, for many good things do not become PRIMITIVE. CYCLING. 105 popular, but by the persistent work of the manu- facturers, who have put time, money and energy into furthering the sport, though undoubtedly for the ultimate good of the people. Would that in some other lines as well disposed persons would do as much. The introduction of this sport has been a thing of the greatest difficulty. Not only has it had to PROGRESSIVE. stand an unusual amount of ridicule, but blind prejudice to a remarkable degree has been its opponent. Boys and dogs have been set upon it. The law has been invoked against it. Cycle manufacturing capital has withstood the law's offi- cers and has had the laws amended. Because horses have shown a disposition at times to inquire 106 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. into the strange-looking contrivance when new, and refused to go on with the proceedings until their curiosity was satisfied, cycles have been kept out of parks and public places by police vigilance, until test cases were made and tried. Horses from time immemorial have shown the same disposition toward circus posters, heaps of old bricks, bands of music, bright-colored parasols and locomotives, and yet locomotives are still allowed to cross prominent city streets at grade in midday. In this particular the horses, if they did object, were but aping their masters. The writer can well remember when the innocent game of croquet was in its infancy, what wire-pulling and trouble it took to get permission to play it in a secluded cor- ner of a large city park containing many square miles. Nothing could be done in that line until the august officials were satisfied. The players even had to go further and appear before the ' ' Board ' ' itself, describe the game and plead for it. "Would it not frighten horses?" asked the president. "Would not the hitting of hard wooden balls by wooden mallets be violent?" asked another. ' ' Might not someone trip over the hoops in walking?" asked a third. ' ' Yes, if he were fool enough to walk in that way, ' ' was the reply. CYCLING. 107 ' ' Might not someone get hit in mistake by a mallet?" inquired another. "Might it not hurt the grass?" was another inquiry. ' ' It might, ' ' was the reply, ' ' but that is what the grass is for. ' ' In relation to this ' ' keep off the grass ' ' nuisance, which is the bugbear of many city athletic sports, it might be well to inquire just what city park grass is raised for. Is it only to be looked at? If so, it should be kept under glass. Some city officials do not understand the uses of city parks. The refusal to allow the use of a certain city park for a military review in honor of a noted personage was well enough in its way, for it was not what the park was for. In return for the damage the citizens would not get an increased profitable use of the breathing-spot. But when it was sought to justify such use by saying that a base-ball game would injure it much more, that was a different matter. The city would be better if the parks were injured daily by base-ball games, if only all the spectators took part, even though it might have to pay daily to have the damage repaired. This city park keep-oif-the-grass management was once shown in a very ludicrous light to a wealthy Englishman traveling in America, who at home was used to the thick turf and shady lanes which his moist climate encpurages. On reaching 108 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. the city of Washington he desired to see what he termed the ''Obelisk," meaning the Washington Monnment. The surrounding grounds were at that time but mud banks, but the sign, "Keep off the Grass" was prominently displayed every- where in anticipation. Our English friend natu- rally took a short cut to the monument, and was stopped by an Irish policeman who would not hear his protestations that he could see no grass. The Englishman supposed that it was a case of black- mail, on account of the opposing nationality and offered a dollar to the Hibernian, which so highly insulted him that the Englishman was marched off to headquarters forthwith, possibly to be kept until there was grass, so that a technical violation of law could be proven. He must have been released at some time, for he lived to tell the tale, a free man once more. But we wander, as cyclists are prone to. The remedy is the same with us as with them. Let alone and they will return. The proportion of those who use cycles in the United States is not an abnormally large one com- pared with other countries. The sport has now secured a good hold everywhere in the whole world. It is more than a sport; it is a recreation with exercise, and has beside many practical uses. Though it does not exercise all the muscles of the body, it exercises many not in general use. It should CYCLING. 109 properly be supplemented with other exercises. In a way it does this itself, for when walking up hills, which it is not advisable to climb awheel, the rider gets a rest for one set of muscles and use for others. Then not only those used in walking are thus exercised but the muscles of the arms are used in pushing the machine. Cycle riding itself, in moderation, affects more particularly the muscles of the calves of the legs and thighs, and in a supple not a hard way. Cycling to excess, however, only tends to weaken and emaciate the same muscles. In bicycle racing or in running against time lies the greatest danger. It is well enough for trained athletes in the pay of manufacturers to show what can be done in long distance runs, or in speed as against a trotting horse, for the sake of adding interest to the sport or to show its possibilities, but these feats in themselves are not what the health seeker wishes to emulate. Record breaking is a great source of unsymmetrical bodies. The rider should wish to advance himself in the art of riding sufficiently well to enable him to enjoy change of scene and air. If he chooses to make a friendly race for distance or endurance, let him do so only among his own friends and very occasionally. We think that it is not the highest mission of the ' ' Bike ' ' which we witness when we see a rider at a bicycle meeting with an attendant who rubs his legs as if he were a horse, puts him up and gives no ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. him his orders. Usually such a rider, though not a horse, is not far removed from an animal, possi- bly a donkey. The daily ride for recreation is as far as many men go, but beyond this is the far more enjoyable, the crowning pleasure of cycling as of horseback riding, touring. It is not possible to conceive any- thing better for the amount of money expended than for two or three friends to start off on cycles on a pleasure excursion of some weeks' duration. That is far preferable to the use of railway trains, and expensive and fashionable hotels. The easy rider is nearly as independent as the pedestrian, with the advantage of covering much longer dis- tances in a day if necessary, and so getting rapidly over any flat and uninteresting districts, to cover which on foot becomes very irksome. This is a peculiar advantage in this country where distances are so great. To reach many points of interest we have to make much greater mileage than abroad. Having undertaken the free and easy style of riding for pleasure, give up every idea of trying to satisfy your friends that you can ride so many miles in so many hours. I^et competition rest. If a tour is to be undertaken, get used to the average run gradually. On a tour, under exercise rather than over. One cannot do as much comparatively, when riding daily for long hours, as he can when out for an hour or two, two or three times a week. CYCLING. Ill Much of the enjoyment of the tour depends, if in company, on what kind of company it is. The wrong choice of companions may injure the best of plans. Except in the cases of some few pecu- liarly constituted riders, a solitary trip is not as enjoyable, but a rider had better go alone than with a disagreeable or unsuitable companion. If you can so hit it, one near your own social position is preferable. A suitable person, though he may be a stranger at first, during a cycle tour may ripen out and afterward become a lifelong friend. Two fairly equal riders are preferable. You do not want to ride with some one whose skill far exceeds your own, unless he is especially agreeable and unselfish, nor do you want one whose strength and endurance are far greater. It will worry him to be consider- ing you, and you to try to emulate him . Two or three companions are better than a club run. It is trying to always observe certain regulations, to ride fixed distances, or to keep certain positions in line if such are required. In a club you cannot always do as you please unless it is the will of the majority. The speed, if the club is kept together, is necessarily the speed of the slowest rider. A remedy for many such evils is in a not too strenuous observance of regulations by club officers. Excep- tionally slow riders, those liking to ^ ' poke, ' ' take things easy and enjoy life as it happens, should be encouraged to go ahead of the main body on an 112 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. earlier start, if it is desirable for all to meet at a fixed time and place ; or they should be allowed to lag if it suits them and arrangements made to wait for them where convenient, while the others may be resting. Among the objections made to cycling, as an exercise, is that the position in riding is often bent, stooping and cramped. To a certain extent this stoop has become the mark of a cycling man, as round shoulders used to be of a rowing man. This is a valid objection when there are grounds for it. The stooping position is objectionable for two prin- cipal reasons. In the first place it prevents the free circulation of blood in the lower limbs, which are doing the most of the work. In the second place it prevents the full and free respiration, espe- cially needed while doing vigorous work. The wrong position also tends to such injuries in the pelvic region, as were by many thought to consti- tute the chief harm of cycling, but which it is now thought are not very common. The correct position is the upright one. It is not necessary to acquire any other. The incorrect one is the one in which the rider leans forward until his body is nearly at right angles with his legs. This is copied blindly from racers, under the impres- sion that it is ''good form," when there is no good reason for it. In racing, riders usually sit in the doubled-up position iii order to lessen the resistance CYCLING, 113 of the air. It is also adopted in hill climbing to a less extent to bring the rider ' ' over his work. ' ' It is entirely unnecessary in ordinary riding. I^adies are not often seen indulging in it. An eminent physician says : "I have frequently had opportuni- ties to notice the difference between the riding of men and women bicyclists, and I have been much surprised at the contrast between the two. The women, as a rule, are graceful, dignified and easy; the men in the majority of instances have looked more like agitated grasshoppers than anything else that I could imagine. They sprawl over their wheels, sit with their spinal column almost in a half circle and act as though it were necessary to work for dear life in order to get ahead. I think it safe to say that not one man in twenty-five rides really well ; the women almost, if not altogether, reverse this rule, for a very ungraceful rider among them I rarely see. ' ' Those who seek to get from the wheel the best physical advantages will take care to acquire the habit of sitting upright in the saddle. By upright is not meant a stiff, bolt upright position, such as would be out of place on horseback. There must be an easy yielding and adaptation to the steed, be he of iron or flesh and blood. It may be desirable to dwell a moment on this much discussed, and by professionals much sneered at, subject of the racing position [Fig. 13]. It will 114 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. be noticed that this rider, a professional, has suc- ceeded in getting the proper curve to the back which was not there naturally. An amateur who blindly imitates [Fig. 14] tries to double up, but his back is not yet professionally curved. Should he prac- tice long enough he may attain the genuine bend. Now if we glance at Fig. 15, and see the position of the framework of the body in such a position, a better idea is gained of how the internal organs must be abnormally compressed. The whole grue- some picture of pale death on the steel horse may be taken as a warning of the results of the prac- tice. Sir Benjamin Richardson, an English bicycling enthusiast, is most outspoken in denunciation of the doubled-up position, which he thinks can do much physical harm. In his opinion the health- fulness of the exercise all depends upon the way in which the body is held. He says: " I have said so much on this subject that people think I am prejudiced against cycling, though as a matter of fact I am very fond of it as an exercise. There is no doubt that a great deal of harm is at present being done by injudicious cycling. The attitude that nearly all cyclists adopt, to a greater or less degree — bending themselves forward over the handles of their machines — is undoubtedly most unhealthy. And, though I cannot explain the reason for taking such an attitude, I know that CYCLING llo I have to keep a careful watch over myself to maintain an erect position. * ' The doubled-up position does more harm than people imagine. Of course, everybody knows that it is ugly. The spinal curves are the most perfect in nature, both for strength and beauty; and these are destroyed. The top of the anterior curve is brought forward — and I am not sure that the pos- terior curve as well is not affected — until the spine becomes almost an arc. The chest bone is then affected by the unnatural pressure placed upon it. The circulation is impaired, and no doubt the lungs are interfered with too. In fact there is hardly any possible evil effects which it does not produce. ' ' Riders of the old-fashioned high machines were better off in this respect than the riders of to-day, and they generally sat much more erect. I think the 'safety' bicycle, with its longer reach, has something to answer for. "Altering the position of the handles — bringing them higher up and further back — might help to improve matters, but that would be unpopular. Any change in the construction of machines which either necessitates an alteration in the manufactur- ers' 'plant,' or impairs the speed of the machine, will meet with a great deal of opposition. A desire for increased speed is mainly responsible for the in- troduction of this attitude. Men find that by bend- ing themselves down they both offer less resistance 116 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. to the wind and get more power over their work, and they will not bother about the remote con- sequences. Long distance riding, too, has done a great deal of harm. In fact, the cyclists of the present generation are feeling the effects of their riding much more than earlier riders did, and even they suffered severely enough. There were Cortis and Keith-Falconer, two magnificent riders, who both died of heart disease. I knew many first-class speed cyclists years ago who told me they felt no ill effects, but they are nearly all dead now, and not at advanced ages. *' Cycling, when indulged in moderately, is not more unhealthy than other sports. Of course, row- ing affects the breath, walking and pedestrianism affect the nerves, the use of dumb-bells and other stationary exercises affect the muscles. And, in the same way, cycling affects the circulation. I have known a man's pulse to go up to 223 during a race, and it can be imagined from that, the work the heart must be called upon to do. And, besides, there is the sudden running down after the system has been strained to this pitch. It might be compared to releasing the spring of a watch and letting it run down suddenly when it is fully wound. The effect on the system is most injurious. Hill- climbing, too, is a very severe strain. Several in- ventions have been tried for storing up energy while going down hill which could be used to assist the CYCLING. 117 rider at the next ascent, and I think it would be a very great benefit if some such idea could be worked out and made to answer." On the subject of the ' ' Racing Position ' ' the lyondon Lancet sounds the alarm as follows: " One evil traceable to bicycling is the confirmed stoop which has already declared itself in many .wheelmen, a result so common in the less strongly built bicyclists of the Continent as to have found its way into classification as the ' kyphosis bicyclis- tarum. ' ' ' The dorsal curvature posteriorly, which used to be rare in boys under fourteen years of age, is, now that the bicycle is so largely used, very frequently met with, particularly among those young bicyclists whose spinal column is developed more rapidly than the ligaments and muscles, and in whose cases, therefore, the equilibrium between those parts is more or less disturbed. ' ' Were it merely an unsightly deformity, the stoop in question ought to be combatted in every way; but confirmed dorsal curvature posteriorly has con- sequences of its own quite mischievous enough to call for immediate counteraction. The displace- ment, embarrassed functional activity and arrested or diseased development of those organs which kyphosis inevitably induces, are all too serious to warrant the slightest neglect in remedying them. Exercise of a kind to accustom the spinal column 118 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. to an action directly antagonistic to the inclination forward of the bicyclist's attitude is what is needed. The use of the Indian clubs, or such similar means of incurvatino^ the spine anteriorly, throwing out the chest and maintaining the head erect, should be practiced with that object. All the undoubted advantages of bicycling may thus be retained with- out that cultivation of the stoop which tends to take a cubit from the stature of its inveterate ex- ponents and to impose a hunchbacked development on what it would then be a figure of speech to call the rising generation." When cycling was first introduced, when there was great prejudice against the machine, physicians shared the common prejudice against them. This was in the days when feeling ran so high that cyclists were supposed to have no rights upon the road ; in contradistinction to to-day, when some riders think they have all the rights and other vehicles and pedestrians none, instead of admitting that all have equal rights. In those days in Eng- land, not earlier than 1876, the driver of a public coach lashed with his whip a cyclist who was pass- ing, while the guard threw an iron ball and rope, prepared beforehand, so as to hit the spokes and drag machine and rider to the ground, for which both driver and guard were fined. Many physicians who then opposed cycling had certain grounds for their opposition, from the fact CYCLING. 119 that the jars and jolts of the old machines indiiced headache and sometimes hernia. Before long they began to change their opinion as the more perfected machines were put upon the market. One English medical man in particular, who had been an oppo- nent of the sport, was in ill-health from a carriage accident. He suffered from nervousness and head- Uche to such an extent that he could not sit in either a carriage or railway train with any comfort, and often walked long distances to avoid the dreaded means of conveyance. He accidently saw a tricycle and was induced to try it. The exercise pleased him and one day he accidently discovered that he had ridden ten miles without suffering, though he was aware that there had been more jar in the riding than he would have experienced in either a railway train or a carriage. This discovery gained his confidence and he rode regularly, with the result that the nervous trouble, which seriously threatened to interfere with his comfort in life, was quite overcome. He became interested to the extent that, as he himself expressed it, he was so con- cerned when riding to know whether he was go- ing to run over a chance half-brick in the road that he quite forgot that his head ought to be aching. This is an example which took place long ago. Since that time many more similar cases could be added to the list for like sufferers to profit by. 120 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. As to the question, what is excess ? from want of a proper consideration of which most doctors of to-day get their cycle patients, that depends. For touring, one authority on the subject of deciding what should be the average day's journey, finds it very necessary to give a very emphatic warning against the error into which so many tourists fall, of fixing a ridiculously high standard which they find it practically impossible to accomplish. A large number of beginners fancy that they can ride with ease from sixty to one hundred miles daily for a week at a stretch. On this basis they arrange their tours, with the result that they either break down utterly and are compelled to take the train home, or else they spend a miserable holiday, riding against time during the whole of the trip. They thus convert what should have been a pleasant outing into a period of hard labor and discomfort. The experienced tourist, on the other hand, does not attempt to fix arbitrarily the distance to be covered each day or the places where halts should be made. He rather shortens the day's journey, being satisfied with forty or fifty miles at the outside, and generally has a spare day in the middle of the week as well, thus letting himself off as lightly as possible, with a view to the more complete enjoyment of the tour as a whole. For the beginner, even shorter distances are advisable. Some twenty to forty miles, more or CYCLING. 121 less, as occasion serves, will be found quite enough to count upon, at any rate until the rider has gauged his powers for road work day after day. This is an important point, for a man who can ride sixty or seventy miles a day at certain inter- vals may find forty miles a day for a week a task, until by lengthened experience he has learned how to economize his strength. According to another authority the question of what distance can be covered in a touring day should be thus decided: Let the individual who wants to know find out how far he can ride com- fortably in an ordinary day, and having made allowances for the time to be spent in sight-seeing, reducing the mileage a trifle in consideration of the weight of baggage to be carried, let him divide the result thus arrived at by three, when the quotient may be set down as the average distance to be ridden daily. From this somewhat sarcastic statement it is to be inferred that there is a tendency to excess. In support of the advice, the same author further states that a noted rider, who has covered 220 miles in a day, makes his diurnal distance when on a pleas- ure tour vary from ten to forty miles. Unless there is a very unusual paucity of scenery en route ^ the tourist who wants to enjoy himself should adopt a similar proportion, with the addition that he should never trouble to get to the destination 122 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. fixed for any one day if stress of weather or otliei considerations make it more desirable to stop at an intermediate point. A moderate bicycle rider who is not an athlete or a flyer on the one hand, nor exceptionally weak on the other, can, on ordinary short rides, when he is in practice, get over nine or ten miles an hour with- out much exertion, and can keep it up about as long as he could comfortably walk with the same amount of exertion, say four or five hours. The extreme lightness of modern machines makes it possible to use man power to the greatest advan- tage. But there are many who cannot do as much as even seven miles an hour, and yet they man- age to get a great deal of amusement out of the pursuit. In any event, for touring there should be some preparation or training. The mere unaccustomed task of sitting in the saddle for a certain number of hours daily may become painful if too suddenly begun. Suitable apparatus and outfit for touring are also, of course, requisites. The cycling tourist has advantages in many coun- tries, particularly in England and America, which can be had in no other form of touring, namely, an opportunity to join cycling organizations which give him great facilities on the road. He can always find some official of the organization within reach in any location to give him needed advice or CYCLING. 123 help, and by his membership alone he can claim many advantages and accommodations, and at a saving of money. All the information obtainable, as to routes, roads, etc., can be had by a member for the asking, either previous to starting or on the way. In the British Isles the amateur organiza- tion, which is virtually the same in this country, 'thus states its case: "The cases are few where a member cannot get all his wants supplied by mem- bers of his own club within four or five miles dis- tance from the place where any misadventure may occur. A member wishing to travel in any direc- tion through the country applies to the club's Chief Consul of the district through which his intended journey lies, and obtains every information neces- sary respecting roads, hotels, best route to pursue, etc. , besides being speeded on his way by the Con- suls of the chief towns through which he passes; for part of a Consul's duty is to keep a watchful eye to the comfort and interest of any touring mem- bers who may be temporarily sojourning in the hotel headquarters. These last are by no means the least important part of the organization. The club has either headquarters or recommended houses in all the chief towns and large villages of the kingdom. Recommended houses, as opposed to hotel headquarters, are houses which can in many cases hardly be designated hotels. Some- times they are snug roadside inns in remote country 124 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. villages. In such places it is often of great importance to the wet or belated traveler to find rest, refreshment and recognition, even though a sanded parlor may be the only sitting-room and a smiling maid may represent boots and waiter. The proprietor of a recommended house enters into a contract with the club, specifying that he will at all times "receive and entertain any members of the club, whether ladies or gentlemen, who pro- duce a valid ticket of membership for the then current year, and he will charge them a tariff of prices" which the contract then proceeds to set forth. These agreements are mutually beneficial. They suit the inn-keeper, because to him it means prac- tically the monopoly of the trade to be done with cyclists, the number of whom would hardly be believed. Many hotels fell into sleepiness and decay when railroads took the place of coaches, and have now through the medium of c}xling tourists revived, and do a profitable business, though teams of galloping posters have disappeared forever. But the arrangement is by no means one- sided. The cyclist also profits by it. He is a com- paratively new creation. His wants are novel and strange. A specimen of the class descending on many a hotel not specially prepared for his recep- tion would probably cause more consternation than delight. The cyclist's hours are uncertain. CYCLING. 125 He is as likely as not to arrive in the middle of the night, or long before breakfast. Whatever the hour of his arrival, he is quite certain to be very tired, very hungry and very hot. He will have very little baggage, and though he should arrive at midday he will certainly want to go to bed; not necessarily to sleep, but for the practical reason 'that bed is the best place for him to wait in while his clothes are being dried. To the good people at a cycling inn, these vagaries are the merest matters of routine. Equally a matter of course is the request of the guest to be called and have breakfast ready at an unearthly hour of the morning, for the favorite plan of the younger spirits, who go career- ing over the country at the rate of eighty or one hundred miles a day, is to get over thirty or forty of them before breakfast. Great is the convenience to these young athletes of finding houses all over the country at which their requirements are studied, and their arrival hailed, not only with cheerful- ness, but with welcome. Many are the travelers who have found the little silver badge of the club a passport to cheery kindness, which no agreement for special tariffs would alone suffice to secure. Nor are the advantage^ confined to the long-run cyclist. Outside of recommended houses^ cycling has virtually revived the wayside inn per se^ where the rider may stop and refresh himself at will. 126 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. Fortunately cyclists are not under such strict regulations everywhere as in Zurich, Switzerland, where the rules have something of the "keep off the grass ' ' flavor. It is a question whether in more modified form they might not do good service in some other localities where riders need reminding that other people, riders and pedestrians, have rights. The following translation from a daily paper of that city gives the town laws governing cycling: ' ' Bicycling is only allowed upon written permis- sion issued to competent riders. This permission must be carried by the rider; it contains his name, occupation, date of birth, place of nativity and address, and it costs two francs a year. Racing is forbidden, and in narrow streets the rider must dis- mount. Special stress is laid upon the speed of the machine. On crowded streets and on turning cor- ners, the rider must go slow. He must not ride with- out using the handles of his machine to steer by ; he must ring his bell in ample time, and if that is not heeded, he must politely warn the pedestrian. Care must be taken not to worry or frighten the foot- passenger. On a single-seated bicycle not more than one person may sit. More than two bicycles are not permitted to run abreast. On holidays, when the streets are crowded, bicycling is not per- mitted at all. On the other hand, the bicycle shares with other vehicles the privilege of the road. Should CYCLING. 127 the rider be the cause of an accident to a pedes- trian he must dismount, render what assistance lies in his power and give his name and address to an officer, together with a written report of the matter. ' ' There are certain solid practical advantages in cycling which will give it a permanent hold on the 'public, independent of fashion. It is being intro- duced, where roads will permit, more and more into practical life and very advantageously. The letter carrier, the messenger, the porter, the newspaper distributer use it. Doctors adopt it to reach their patients, and suburban clergymen make use of it in the discharge of parish duties. We have seen a divinity professor ride up to his class-room to deliver his theological lecture. For one thing we are all greatly indebted to the cycling community, and will be more and more as its numbers and influence increase, and that is a tendency to improve country roads and city paving. The work already done in that line in many locali- ties here and abroad is considerable, though appar- ently little. Any improvement in this respect is a great boon to the community at large, including all those who never ride a cycle. Every user of horse flesh is benefited. His animal has less wear and tear, his carriage and himself likewise. The jar of any moving thing is lessened, and even the city stay- at-home is benefited by reason of the abatement 128 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE: of the nervously trying noise due to the better paving. For these and all other blessings may we be truly thankful ; particularly as many nervous diseases, due primarily to noise, from such sources as for instance railway trains in country, or other innumerable noises in cities, are largely on the increase. Attention is called to this later. The abatement of such noises will be the philanthropic and medical problem of the twentieth century. Pedestrianism- VII. Pedestrianism. Of course any one who, either from want of funds or from fear of the ridicule of his non-cycling fellows, should he adopt knee-breeches and polo cap, cannot even bestride the wiry steed, will nat- urally fall back on what may at least be considered next best, namely, his legs. As to the grade of "next" opinions differ. Though " shank's mare " is handy to the poor student for exercising pur- poses, many who could buy not only cycles but expensive horses believe there is nothing like walking. It has long been known not only as a healthful but a pleasurable exercise, and it comes the most natural. It is the best and cheapest dyspepsia cure extant. Professional and amateur walking and running contests do not concern us just here. Walking in other forms, whether as a daily constitutional, long or short, or as walking tours, is more in the line of the needs of the ordinary individual. Charles Dickens' regular preparation for his daily literary work was a brisk walk of ten miles, at four miles an hour. After that he felt ready to take up (131) 132 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. the brain work. When prevented from any cause from getting the constitutional, he sorely felt the need of it. Kant allowed nothing to interfere with his daily afternoon walk. George Sand used day- time for walking and night for work. Wordsworth was an indefatigable pedestrian. Most public and literary men of to-day are walkers. Healthful walking must combine recreation, change of scene, something to divert the mind, and must be in the open air. This simple form of exercise, which is probably the oldest, and which it is hoped will never go out of fashion, stimulates every gland and organ in the body to activity. During walking the heart beats more strongly and quickly. More arterial blood is pumped to nourish every portion of the frame. The liver shares the general activity, and the kid- neys secrete more copiously. The skin becomes active and perspiration flows freely. Much used-up matter is excreted which would have remained in the blood. By the air which is breathed into the lungs the blood itself is vitalized. It is a soothing exercise, by which a calmness of mind is obtained which we cannot get indoors. All the exercises of walking, the motion of the feet, legs and body, could be had on a treadmill, shut up in a dark, cheerless room, from which all air and sunlight were excluded. The muscles would be exercised by such a performance, but the mind r 134 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. would not be refreshed. The mind would be in- jured and the body fatigued. The tediousness of the work would prevent it from being invigorating. The exerciser would be worse off afterward than before. A walk in early morning in pure air with nature for scenery would be another thing altogether. Walking, also, to have the best results should have a purpose. Simply walking a certain distance and returning again, probably by the same route^ as on a track, is not so beneficial as a stroll with some definite object in view at the end. This object may be simply a visit to a friend, with a few min- utes' conversation, but even this is enough to make the walk a healthful one. Walking in the country, especially in the summer, cannot be very tedious to a person with a mind that can enjoy nature. There are, of course, cases when walking is not a healthful exercise, that being dependent on the individual. No two persons require exactly the same amount or kind of exercise. For the majority it is healthy. It at least takes people into pure air and into sunlight. In addition to quickening the motion of the blood, it uses many muscles not only of the legs, but of the arms, chest and abdomen. Even those of lesser strength benefit by it, being exhilarated by the healthful glow which it brings on if properly enjoyed. This proper method is not always adopted. We use walking usually only as a means to an end, not as an exercise in itself. FIG. 17. 136 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. Those who walk simply to get there, with perhaps a dragging, listless footstep, and without breathing properly, which is slowly through the nose, have no knowledge of the pleasures of the recreation. A brisk, energetic, elastic step should be used. The tread should be well on the toes, so as to be springy, thus saving jar. Hold the body erect and properly poised. If you grow accustomed to a daily walk, observing these regulations, you will find that you can hardly exist without it. The constitutional, to be truly healthful, should include some running. A spurt or two will be very efficacious in increasing the lung power and in improving the breathing. We can see this in the physical development of athletes who make a specialty of each of these two departments. Fig. 1 6 was a young Harvard athlete whose specialty was walking. His walking powers are in prime condition, but his lung capacity does not compare with that of the sprinter, or short-distance fast runner [Fig. 17]. The walker [Fig. 16] is in stronger contrast when compared with Fig. 18, which is a Yale athlete celebrated for long-distance running, whose build shows not so much strength as great endurance for long-continued exertion. He has great lung capacity, and undoubtedly the strong heart action which always goes with such a build. Figs. 16, 17, 18, 19, 22, 23 and 50 are from Scribn$r's Magazine^ by per- mission. FIG. l8. 138 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. Of course one cannot run during any portion of one's daily constitutional in a city street. Such a runner is at once suspected to be a thief, while in fact it is the man who hinders the exercise by his ridicule who steals, taking away the other's benefit. We sometimes adopt this gait to catch a street car or ferry boat, but then it is under great excitement, in heat and discomfort, and with perturbed mind. Who can say this is profitable? With a little forethought much good exercise can be gotten out of ordinary walking anywhere. To climb a steep hill can be made of as much value as a run, if we only know how to do it. The com- mon way is to bend over, rush at the work with a vim, and only stop when exhausted, half way up. Old residents of such hilly cities as Albany, N. Y., one side of Providence, R. I., or San Francisco know better. As soon as they reach the foot of the hills they straighten up, breathe full, and start up slowly, which gait they can keep up without stop until the top is reached. Of course not every- body in San Francisco does this, because there most people would prefer to wait for the cable, though it might take all day. An experienced cycle rider, if he rides up hill at all, knows that the way to do it is to adopt the same tactics here laid down for foot walking. The climbing of a stairway, usually so exhausting, can be made a means of exercise if climbed as the PEDESTRIANISM. 139 hill should be climbed. New York, in its elevated railway stations, which are so trying to people with weak lungs and feeble legs, has exceptional facili- ties for this exercise. Those compelled to use them should remember that they can be made very beneficial. It would seem that New York had planned these ample facilities especially for the Exercise, and therefore insists that they shall be used. They amount to compulsory physical edu- cation. Such a stairway, as say the one at One Hundred and Twenty-fifth street and Eighth avenue, where an elevator at say one cent additional fare would pay a big interest on the investment, can be made a good liver exerciser. On account of the weight carried, such stair climbing is equal to a great deal of exertion in lifting. If the five-cent passenger will bear in mind that he can make the ascent the means of building up his strength with- out extra charge, if not attempted too rashly, he will lighten his labor. A firm slow step, erect carriage, so as to get long full breathing, steer- ing clear of sudden and taxing movements, will do a great deal to do away with the terrors of the stairs to people of ordinary strength and health. With ladies the benefit will largely depend upon how much the dress allows freedom in breathing and motion. A good walker can indulge in what is known as the " German Student's Way," namely, touring on 140 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. foot, which if the strength is equal to it, the prepa- ration just, and the planning proper, can give as much pleasure as touring on wheel or horseback. Nearly the same requirements are to be considered, more particularly congenial and suitable company, if company is preferred to solitude. For most dis- positions, company adds to the recreation. As the German Student sings: On foot I ga3'ly take my way, O'er mountains bare and meadows gay. And he who is not of my mind Another traveling mate may find ' He cannot go with me. We can never forget how, as a schoolboy, we once spoiled a summer walking tour by an improper choice of traveling companion, a dear friend, but unsuitable. To begin with, he had long legs, while we had short, which not only necessitated different speed, but made different desires. The friend's aim and object was to cover distance, to get there and to get there first. He went like a steam engine, except when hampered by his very slow-going tender. The tender did not object to going at proper speed when going, but it wished to stop often to replenish supplies, to run off on a siding and wait for another train, in fact to loiter and rest as if we were on a holiday for enjoyment and not on a cinder path. This unusual fellowship lasted with increasing irksomeness only for about one PEDESTRIANISM. 141 week. By that time, after some one hundred miles had been run, the strain became so great that the coupling broke, and both engine and tender had to be shipped home by another train. In other ways we had added discomfort and insured failure from a want of knowledge as to preparation. Our finances were in a critical state, a state of unstable equilibrium. The least extrava- gance might mean financial disaster, and we did not want our trip interfered with by any such little matter as that. We planned that our daily expenses should be only for a moderate-priced lodging and hot breakfast. The other meals we were to take out of doors in picnic style, carrying the main requisites. We were not posted in the matter of condensed foods, but after great consultation we somehow reached the conclusion that beef-tongue combined all the requisites of compactness, dura- bility, strength and variety. Our kind mothers were appealed to, and, not to disappoint us, they furnished the tongue, a fine large one, which they (one of them) boiled and gave us entire. We sliced it up ready for eating and packed it in tin baking- powder boxes, which we carried in home-made knapsacks. To this we expected to add a pound of crackers or a loaf of bread daily, whichever was handy to buy at the time. We supposed that we could obtain water as a beverage whenever needed. 142 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. This diet of tongue and crackers did not turn out as expected. For one thing the kind of crack- ers we had in mind, of a certain brand, fresh and crisp from a hot barrel, were not to be found. Again, we appeared to have selected a region where the inhabitants did not eat bread, or at least sell it in the shops. In the absence of both bread and crackers we took to ginger snaps and tongue which somehow disagreed with us. The last thing in the cracker line which we struck was a square hard biscuit about one-half inch in thickness, which on account of dryness and for want of a bet- ter name we called saw-dust cakes. They re- quired unlimited amounts of water to assist the mastication. What probably knocked the bottom out of our plans more than anything else was an occurrence in relation to our water supply. We were travers- ing a fertile farm region, one noticeable feature of which was that the barns were very much larger in proportion and better appointed in every way than the farmer's dwellings. It was a hot, dusty day, and we were very thirsty after our diet of tongue and crackers just as a shady farmhouse came in sight with a well in front, giving promise of plenty of very cool water. We lost no time in reaching it, but as a matter of courtesy spoke pleasantly to the farmer's wife on the back porch, and stated our intention of drinking, which was in PEDESTRIANISM. 143 our eyes a polite request. Our astonishment was great when we met with a firm refusal and an order to "be off boys ! " We have since been told, whether truthfully or not we cannot say, that the region is noted for the meanness of its inhabitants. Bishop lycighton Coleman, of Delaware, is in the habit of keeping himself active by a yearly solitary walking trip of at least a month's dura- tion, usually in the wilds of Virginia. He tells many amusing incidents of his tours. He travels incognito, in very unclerical dress, with knapsack on back and unbishop-like crozier in hand, so that the bishop portion of his stature is not recogniza- ble. When no other accommodation offers he bivouacs for the night, though he prefers a roof over his head. On one occasion, wishing to rest over night, and if possible over a day also, he came late to a lonely house, after everything had been made tight for the night. After a prolonged knock- ing at the door, a man put his head out of a win- dow and in answer to a request for shelter said that his wife could not sleep a wink if he were to admit a tramp into the house. Under the circumstances it would have been useless and inexpedient to claim that the supposed tramp was the Bishop of Delaware and an S. T. D. , so the case was argued on its own merits. After long argument a conces- sion was made that the tramp should be allowed to lie on the "settle'' in the kitchen over night, 144 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. if he would promise that he would depart at once in the morning after he had been furnished with breakfast. It was taken for granted that the hospi- tality of the night's lodging included a breakfast, even in the mind of the tramp-fearing housewife. This arrangement saved the Bishop. Here was his opportunity, and he made good use of it. At breakfast-time he exerted his well-known powers of pleasing to such effect that the host and the wife, who had been called down in wonder to hear the tramp talk, became interested, and suspicion was disarmed. Before breakfast was over the Bishop, on his own merits as a man only, had an invitation to spend the day, and at the close of the day a pressing invitation to stop again on his return, *'and be sure to spend a week." Walking on foot gives a freedom of action, an ease of approach to anything of interest, and an ab- sence of care about everything under creation which are not obtainable in other forms of touring. A man may ride over a country, and afterward when he explores it on foot he may find it virtually an un- explored land. To thoroughly enjoy such touring you should, as far as possible, retain what comforts you are used to at home: a good bed, regular meals, a morning bath; or for what is missing do some training so that you can do without it without dis- comfort. Eat good food and slowly, and digest it. Fast eating is usually overeating, to say nothing PEDESTRIANISM. 145 of the food being indigestible from want of masti- cation. On the road allow plenty of time for meals, and rest after them. Whether yon are camping or in an inn, you cannot get along with- out good sleep. This can be more easily gained by young people, if camping or bivouacking, or by a person who has been used to it all his life, than by an older person who tries it for the first time. He cannot so easily adjust himself to the new con- ditions with comfort. Do not neglect your toilet under any consideration. That means so many miles off the record and so much more discomfort, with possible ill-temper and consequent loss of healthful exercise in walking. What to take and what to leave at home can be learned from the manuals which experienced hands have compiled for that purpose. Above all, for an exercise which involves so much use of the feet, attention to the matter of shoes is important. They should be made with broad soles, the soles only of moderate thickness, of pliable leather, and for comfort with not too high heels. The toes should be broad. It is impossible to tour comfortably in pointed shoes, in which the toes must necessarily be piled one on top of the other. The length in particular and the width across the ball should be more than is needed, but the shoe should not be too large. It should fit neatly across the instep and at the ankle, so as to hold the foot xo 146 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. comfortably in place. If not a fit at those points, the foot simply slips down to the toe of a too-big shoe and the shoe then becomes too short. The toes jam up and hurt, while the extra room is at the heel, which slips up and down until a blister there is the consequence. There can be nothing done without some trouble, and attention to these requisites is the trouble necessary to attain a pleasant walking tour. Base Ball. VIII. Base-ball. We come now to a department of a great division in athletics, which includes games or contests, in which recreation and usually outdoor exercise is gained by efforts to get possession of, or do some- thing with, a spherical object of varying size called a ball. The size varies from that of a thimble to the dimensions of a foot-ball. The field covered by this little device as a means of diversion is an immense one, including the boys' game of marbles, billiards, bowling, base-ball, cricket, lacrosse, tennis, croquet, foot-ball of all kinds, and many other games which are less known. How the importance of the spherical-shaped object was attained can hardly be told. Possibly the shape, fitting the natural curve of the hand, was one con- sideration. It could be thrown or caught with cer- tainty, and without injury to the anatomy, from (149) 150 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. absence of sharp corners. Again it might have been the ease of motion when rolling or in the air, when it always presented a front evenly void of friction, or its delicacy of motion under certain cir- cumstances. It responded to every little influence of skill or surroundings, and this gave variety of result and a certain uncertainty. When rolling free it became an exponent of chance as in rou- lette. It is not only man that loves to play with a ball. A dog, a kitten, a young lion, a monkey, are alike devoted to it. Or, as Mr. Simpson says, in speaking of golf, ^^ There is a large class of games in which a ball plays an important part. Balls of all sorts and sizes amuse men — hard ones, soft ones, large ones, small ones. They are treated in a variety of ways. They are struck, used to strike with, pushed against each other, knocked into holes, rolled as close as possible to various things, battered against walls, knocked over nets, cuffed with the hand, jerked with the finger and thumb, struck with an instru- ment, kicked with the feet, etc." In some games the ball is buffeted whilst in motion, and in others while at rest. In some, one player's aim is to make it go, whilst others try to stop it; or both may want to keep it moving, each hoping that the other will fail to do so. In some games there is but one ball, about which there is a continual struggle; in others there may be many belonging to different players BASE-BALL. 151 or theirs in turn. There is a common element in them all — rivalry. The game of base-ball in this country, as cricket is in England, is, of course, the leading game of the class. In both cases this is due to national characteristics of the people who take part in it. One game better suits one, another the other. The game of base-ball appeals more strongly to the younger element. The older man looks to something different in the way of personal exer- cise, unless he recalls old triumphs by becoming a spectator, which physically will do him no good whatever. To the great popularity of the game, even though it has run to the extreme of all possi- ble professional evils in its day, we may attribute the greater part of all the athletic training which the men now in adult life have received, to the last- ing benefit of the nation. As a professional business, base-ball has been in its zenith, has declined from abuses which nearly wrecked it, which in turn have been its salvation because they called so emphatically for a cure. The cure for the evil was not long in forthcoming. The game will never again reach the great height of popularity as a spectacular game it once did, but it can hardly ever lose its general popularity. It has, time and again, been said that base-ball was dead, meaning that it was failing to draw as many 152 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. thousands of dollars at the gate, or as many bets from the gambler, but in other ways it is still a very lively corpse. A recent railway journey on the afternoon of a holiday, Decoration Day, of about one hundred miles length, between two Eastern cities, was the means of verifying this statement. In every town or village passed through, the young people were given up to recreation. Every regular ball ground, track, or vacant lot was occupied. The professional player and the street urchin were alike busy. By actual count the train passed one hundred and seven games of greater or less importance. Of these, one was a track contest in general athletic sports, one was cricket, three were lawn tennis, and one hundred and two were base-ball or an attempt at it. This might also go to prove another statement which has been made, that of all the field sports and games that have been introduced into civilized countries from time immemorial, not one so far as history has kept any record, has ever awakened the same interest or enjoyed such steady progress along the highway of public favor as base-ball. When its professional phase was at its greatest (it is not so very far behind now) the game in- volved the exchange and investment of over ten millions of dollars annually. It was of such pub- lic importance that the great newspapers and BASE-BALL. 153 magazines granted it thousands of columns of space. Its votaries were not only clerks, mechanics and business men, but great capitalists as well. Noth- ing else can at all compare with the game in attendance or money invested except the turf. Even England, with all her love of her own dis- tinctively national game, wonders at our astonishing li"berality in the support of ours. England has never reached anything like the same figures, not- withstanding the prominence she gives to her similar institution, cricket. In the United States, after it had started in the East, the South was the last section to adopt the sport generally, but its realm is not now confined to this country. It has spread to Canada, to Eng- land itself, and it is now played in the antipodes of New Zealand and Australia. It has reached Japan, the Sandwich Islands, Cuba and Mexico, and we now hear of it in Italy and Austria. It is said that in answer to an English inquiry, a leading American once gave the following reasons for its popularity : ''It is because base-ball, like the average American, has more dash, more enter- prise, more vim, and more git-up-and-git to it in a minute than anything else of its kind that any other nation on earth ever attained to in a lifetime." Its popularity was undoubtedly due to inherent elements which are identical with many American characteristics. It is, besides, clean, honest, very 154 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. vigorous, and has enough of the spice of possible risk and danger to make it very interesting. Both cricket and base-ball are, however, free from many of the dangerous features of other sports, particu- larly the roughness of foot-ball. lyike foot-ball it trains a person to quick and ready co-operation with others. There is always an uncertainty in possible results which adds to the zest. While like cricket in certain good features, it has none of the tiresome features of the latter. As now played, even professionally, it is largely free from the dis- advantages of the bookmaker or the pool board, such as surround the race track. It does not lend itself readily without risk of suspicion, to juggling, sell-outs and crooked work. All these are import- ant points even from a professional point of view, and particularly if the game is to be kept popular for private exercise. Its professionals are probably of a higher class than in any other sport. Its pro- fessional ranks have at times been filled with edu- cated men fit to hold the highest stations in the land. As to physical results, all positions in the game offer healthful exercise, including the batting, run- ning and fielding. Of course the pitcher has the maximum of exertion and should be in condition to stand it. The pitcher offers the batters from two to three hundred balls during the course of a Fig. 19. 156 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. game, which exercise naturally produces in a pro- fessional pitcher a greater development of one arm and shoulder, if the pitcher is one-handed only. This abnormal development a college ath- lete usually counteracts by gymnasium work. Those who play for recreation only do not get enough of it to produce such an effect. As the game is now played it will be noticed that the mere pitching does not include all of the exercise developed in that station. If we take into consideration the number of times a pitcher turns around to perplex the batter or to watch the bases, we may fairly claim that the neck and waist have a large addi- tional share of work and must be developed accord- ingly. In the pitching itself the muscles of the waist and body are more used by a person with short arms than by one with long. It is claimed that the short-armed pitcher uses more favorable leverage, and hence has more endurance than a long-armed pitcher. The muscles of the arms, chest, back and abdo- men are used more or less strongly in striking. In running, the arms and legs are used as in other running, with the exception that the distances are short and the lungs do not get as fully developed as in long-distance running. Fig. 19 represents a Yale player who has the typical development of a base-ball pitcher. He had a ball record before he entered college. FIG. 20. SOME POSITIONS OF THE PITCHER IN THE BOX. FROM INSTANTANEOUS I^IFE PHOTOGRAPHS. Reduced from" Harper's Weekly" by permission. Copyright, 1893, by Harper Brothers. BASE-BALL, 157 As an illustration of the great variety of positions which it is possible for a pitcher to assume, thus indicating the amount of the consequent exercise. Fig. 20 shows a great number of positions which have actually been used by such players during the course of actual games. The figures are repro- duced from instantaneous life photographs taken during the games. This great number, which is by no means all that are possible, shows how many muscles of the body must be used. Such variety is equivalent to a large amount of gymnasium work on many diverse machines. If business men would do more of the playing of base-ball rather than being content to watch it, it would be to their greater advantage. The sport offers many inducements for an informal game. The game can be played to a finish in a very short time, which is one of the reasons why it is popular even as a spectacle. One cannot blame a man for being interested in it as he would in a theatrical per- formance, though that is not of value for physical education. It is attractive as a spectacle, because in a professional, or at least a skillful game, the spectator sees a quick sharp contest in which the points of play are numerous and diverting. The changes are constant and if the strength of the opposing forces is fairly well matched, it is excit- ing from start to finish. There is never a dull moment. The players are directly under the eye 158 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. of the looker-on, who from the seats can see every movement that is made. The match rarely lasts more than an hour and a half. It is like a modern drama for speed of action. There is hardly a moment when the ball is not in play. There is no tedious wait after a batsman has been caught. By the same play that dispatched him one or even two more players may be put out. The players are obliged to be always alert, and thus the inter- est of the on-looker never flags. In a professional game, the spectators regard the whole performance as an exhibition, and they demand that the performers shall be the very best that can be procured. The American base-ball audience would as quickly resent the introduction of an amateur or poor player into a game which they had paid to see as an habitual playgoer in lyon- don or Paris would resent the putting of an amateur actor into the cast at a first-class theatre. It is this very excitement of the game, these points which make the spectacle so interesting which tend to prevent the amateur player from indulging in the exercise personally. He finds it vastly more interesting to see a prime game than to take part in a poor one himself. The good points of the game are thus its drawback. In this respect the slower cricket has the advantage. No one but an old cricket player, or one well posted in the game, can get up much enthusiasm over an BASE-BALL. 159 exhibition game of cricket, and even then the enthu- siasm is not so intense as over base-ball, at least that enthusiasm which is due to the playing of the game. But as an amateur game it can be made to afford much recreation and diversion on a holiday after- noon or at evening, to young men engaged in work or business. It is a hardy, vigorous game, calling into play the wits as well as the muscles. It requires nerve, pluck, daring, control of temper, ready wit, supple muscles, team work, subordina- tion to authority, ability not only to bat well but to field expertly, and to run the bases fleetly and with judgment. Base- ball combines all the merits of an exact science, with all the glorious uncertain- ties of good and bad luck. The interest while the game lasts is intense. There are more supreme moments in a short time in a well-played game of base-ball than in any other contest of equal dura- tion, whether the contestants in the game are skill- ful or otherwise. IX. Cricket. We are told that disease germs are floating around us continually. They fall upon good and bad ground alike. When they fall on unsuitable ground they wither away and nothing results. If they happen to light on congenial soil they spring up, and a crop of disease of that particular form re- sults. It is certain that the germs of both base-ball and cricket were floating around in England for years. THE DISEASE GERMS OF BASE-BAI,I, AND CRICKET, MAGNIFIED. Cricket was the congenial sport, suited to English- men and their habits, therefore it took root. It better suited the easy-going, slower but more solid nation. It was just the thing for people who liked to take their fun or recreation soberly. As for (163) 164 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. base-ball, our nation and surroundings have cer- tainly been more congenial. When the microbes, first found in England in rounders, perhaps, or in Germany or ancient Rome in hand-ball, reached this country, they made an epidemic of town-ball, and later of base-ball. One fact is certain, we have had the disease badly. Cricket and the old stool-ball, played by men, women and children, with a stool or a cricket for a wicket, are probably synonymous. A Spaniard has thus described a game of cricket. It is well to see it as others do : ' ' ' Two posts are placed in the ground at a great distance from one another. The player close to one of these posts throws a large ball to another party, who awaits the ball to send it far with a small stick with which he is armed. The other players then run to look for the ball, and while the search is going on the party who struck it runs incessantly from post to post." The average American spectator at modern cricket, who, of course, understands little of the game, would say that the Spaniard had hit it ex- actly. The Prince of Wales, when he first saw the professional American base-ball team play in Eng- land, probably claimed that the description applied nearly as well to the game of base-ball. A Frenchman, however, who coiild see in the modern game of cricket no resemblance to a fete, CRICKET. 165 his preference, called it bloodthirsty and ridiculous. To him it appeared spiritless; there was no prome- nade, no band, no ' ' nossing. ' ' He said there were a number of men standing about in white. "Suddenly one of them takes a run, and hurls a ball of terrific weight (that is M. Taine's expres- sion) apparently at the head of another player, who hits it furiously with a club and runs away, where- upon all the other men in white run after him and the spectators applaud." He ends his description, evidently bewildered and tired, by wanting to know " Where is the cricket? " Cricket, as an English game, gives that nation much exercise and recreation. It is there played by prince, shoemaker or pauper. An Englishman carries his cricket bat with him like he does his gun-case or India rubber bath. It forms part of his bundle of canes and umbrellas, which, with his hat-box, go to make up his heavy marching order. As an American game it is, of course, an exotic, but it has taken quite a firm hold. Philadelphia for years has been its stronghold owing to two facts: First, because its clubs were the wealthiest, their houses and grounds the best, and thus it was possi- ble to make the matches more interesting. Sec- ondly, because its talent was native and developed. Other locations had to depend on imported players, or at least those who had learned their play out of the 166 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. country. The game now flourishes in New York, Boston, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit, Pulhnan, 111., and elsewhere. A reason which has been given for the lesser popularity of the game in America is that good turf, thick green grass, is a prime requisite of the game. Compared with damp England, with its rich sod, our season is short when it can be played. In cricket bowling the ball must hit the ground before being hit by the bat. Base-ball, on the contrary, can be played for nine out of twelve months, because it does not matter to the ball what kind of ground the game is played on, as the ball does not touch the ground between the pitcher and the bat. The " overs " or changes of side every four balls, causing much loss of time and strength to the players, make cricket a slower game. In cricket all the players of a side go to the bat before the other side has any chance. Base-ball, on account of the rule, "three men out, side out," can play nine or ten innings to a side in one afternoon. In cricket some- times three days will not suffice to give the two innings a side, to which, for purely artificial reasons, the game is usually limited. It is thus three days' against three hours. Again, if three days are allowed to a match and it is hinted that three days' gate money is necessary to pay such of the players as may be professional, it often happens that without BOWI^ING POSITION, SHOWING PHYSICAI, DE;V^I,0PME;NT GAIN]5D BY cricke;t PI^AYING. CRICKET. let purposely slow play the game cannot be spread over three days. This affects the interest of the game to both spectator and player. Without some professionals the game cannot usually get along in England, on account of the length of time required to learn to play it expertly. Only a man who has made more or less of a business of it all his life can be expert enough to keep the game moving — par- ticularly to furnish the bowling. Efforts have been made to Americanize the game (of course changes would not be thought of in con- servative England) by introducing modifications, a larger number of balls to an " over," or by the adop- tion of a rule a certain number of ' ' men out, side out, ' ' based on rules of base-ball, but to these changes objection has been made by all hands, even here. Many of those who play the game in America are imbued with British notions, which is one reason why they adopt it, and they reason as the Britisher. Objection is made that by sending the side out oftener, on the plan of base-ball, the batsman, after he had got his hand in and was prepared to run up a large score, would have to begin afresh when he again took the bat. Yet it is this very thing which makes the long scores, so many drawn games, and the tired fielder, one of which Mr. Gale describes as saying " F m tired and ' ungry and I want to go ' ome. ' ' It is certain that if any such changes were ever to become adopted, such result, if they did so result, 168 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. would affect all alike. The best players, who now object the most, would have the advantage if there were advantage, for they could more easily get their hands in again. It is certain that base-ball does not present the number of drawn games credited to cricket. When the Australians visited England m 1886, they won nine games, lost eight and'drew twenty, which may be counted an average. As the game is now played in England it is losmg ground as a means of general physical improvement. We hear more than one voice raised against turning the play into a laborious or danger- ous business, either by interpretation of rules, style of play, or by professionalism. In olden time the game was something very much more gentle and simple, as old prints show women and children standing near the wickets as if playing. To our eyes it is still composure itself compared with base- ball. The game now runs to undue length, because it IS becoming unequal. Everything possible has been put in the bowler's way. The batsman is practically allowed to guard his wickets with his pads as well as his bat. Against these odds, only professional bowlers, capable of making the ball break, which is the change of direction after touching the ground, which our base-ball does without touching when it curves, can cope. Without a good bowler it is fully possible for an average CRICKET. 169 team, which may happen to get to the bat first, to run up amazing scores, and to run out the game to a draw on time limit, even to three days, without giving the other side a chance at all. Thus a pro- fessional bowler at least becomes a part of nearly every amateur game. The difficulty with professionalism in English cricket, which we get over in American base-ball by keeping the two classes entirely separate, is thus hard to combat in that country. There is hardly any amateur cricket bowling worthy the name, so great is the amount of time required to attain it. As transplanted here, the game has one advan- tage, that up to the present time there is little pro- fessionalism. The empirical rule usually followed, that each side must complete its batting before the other side has a chance, in which respect base-ball has the advantage, prevents the neck and neck interest of the American game, though it may make the spec- tator more of a critic and less of a gambler. It is a question whether the general interest in the big matches is not due solely to the company and fashion, and not to the game. In Americanizing the game, the most we have done is to limit the hours of play in any one game and to play more one-inning matches, such as are not usually played, except as what might be called 170 ATHLETICS JROk PHYSICAL CULTURE. second-class matches or those gotten up for amuse- ment on a Saturday half-holiday. As it now stands, cricket is the same the world over, which in one way is an advantage. It would seem that the game has never been acclimated here, simply transplanted. When we adopted English foot-ball we changed it to suit our requirements. Our base-ball itself was an Americanizing of an English prototype. It has been claimed that the only reason we have not adopted cricket is because we were not allowed to Americanize it, though had we done so, it would not have been so grievous a sin as some imagined. The English schools, which to some extent have in turn adopted American base-ball , have made certain changes in the rules to suit English ideas without asking our permission, and the two countries have not vSeen fit to go to war about it. The customary hours of play in the great English all-day cricket matches are to start play at twelve o'clock each day. At two o'clock lunch is served, which takes one hour. At three play begins again and is continued until five or six at the latest, stop- ping in time for dinner. American cricket often makes the morning hour eleven o'clock, with shorter lunch hour ; and more promptness in play and between innings is insisted on ; all of which is in the line of what the best amateur English players propose in their attempts to preserve real old-fashioned English cricket, with CRICKET. 171 enjoyment and innocent recreation for mind and body in the game itself. They do not wish it to be a national game only because it is the fashion to find everybody present at the great games at Lord's in the fashionable season. It is difficult to tell which of the two games of cricket and base-ball is the more scientific. The visiting English team in America in 1886, saw one of our high-priced pitchers at work at base-ball, and thought his balls easy to hit. On making the remark they were accommodated with a trial. Much to their surprise their best batsmen found the balls anything but easy to hit. The base-ball men, also the best in their class, were then given a trial at cricket, with the best of the visitors against them, and were likewise surprised. A good athlete may be an excellent cricketer, but it by no means follows that a good cricketer is always an athlete. It requires more training than cricket to be an all-round man. It so happens, though, that one addicted to cricket, except he be a professional, usually follows some other sport also. Its votaries speak of cricket as a glorious game. Wellington, it is claimed, said that the battle of Waterloo was won in Eton cricket fields, meaning that it was there and in similar places that his offi- cers and men had learned staying power, and stay- ing power and health are synonymous terms, No 172 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. one can stay well who has not a moderately strong healthy heart, with good lungs or bellows power, and bodily muscles to match. In favor of cricket as a healthful sport we have much negative recommendation. We hear of hurt- ful surroundings in other sports, but never a word of reproach in connection with cricket. As a men- tal recreation it fosters correct judgment because it is necessary to estimate the strength or weakness of opponents and to have decision to use the knowledge. Patience and good temper are essen- tial, also coolness, perseverance and quickness in emergencies. No fool can be a good cricketer. It is usually conceded that to become a proficient cricketer one must begin to play in his youth and continue the practice every year. A few weeks' play will not develop him into even an ordinary player. An English amateur player who has dis- tinguished himself in school or college can, on entering practical life, play for his county, or on the representative eleven of his town. This is expensive business or amusement as he may look at it, and leaves no time for other business or pro- fession. If he cannot afford this and is a good cricketer, he often becomes a professional, possibly of the better sort, such as in England are kept in every school for coaching and directing cricket and perhaps other athletic matters. To their credit it should be said that this professional AN oi,D cricke;te:r in batting position. CRICKET. 173 instructor class is composed mostly of men of high character, unspoiled by the admiration and toady- ing which a professional cricketer usually gets from an admiring crowd. The best professional men, as here, gravitate toward an instructorship, in which they earn a decent and respectable liveli- hood. Of course there are duffers in this class also, but they soon find their level. As to whether the pursuit of the game need thus interfere with the business of life. Dr. W. G. Grace, the great cricketer, who is in his own person a typically developed one, thinks not. He says: "Very few are so situated that they cannot spare one hour daily in season for practice" (if they don't have to go too far for it, of course, as many of our city people do), ' ' and the Saturday afternoon for matches, and that we believe to be sufficient to keep in form for representative matches." Of course professional and other duties will prevent a man getting away for a month or two in the season to play for the county. These remarks refer, of course, to one who has already learned cricket, and it would seem from this, if a player were once in practice, that he could with a little work keep his skill. The game cannot be very rough and trying, for the reason that many middle-aged men and some quite old men have been known to play it and play it well. Mr. Grace himself was not young when he was at his best as a player. One Father Budd played at four-score years. 174 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. It is possible for the game to be played by many kinds of people, and under many diverse circum- stances. It has been played even where grass could not grow, on sand, on gravel, or on ice, as between the crews of the Hecla and Fury in March, 1823, ^^^ Parry's second voyage of the northwest passage, which, by the way, was a month not used for cricket in England. A game was played at Hong Kong in October, 1874, when it was so hot that when the middle stump was bowled out during a match, the two bails remained in their position. It was found that the varnish had melted and had glued the bails together. This has happened elsewhere. There have been matches between women, married women against single women and the like. There was also once a match between one-arm men and one- legged men. The one-armed men won. The one- legged men were continually breaking or losing their wooden supports. It is to be supposed they were bowled out as stumps. In accounting for the comparative slowness of the game under certain circumstances, as when professionals are employed with amateurs, particu- larly in county elevens, an Englishman remarks that these professionals, whose bread and butter depends upon it, play not so much to win the match, as to increase their individual average on which other engagements depend. Their sole CRICKET, 175 object is to keep up the wicket, not to run, and they wish, if possible, to carry out their bat at the end of the innings. They have an utter indiffer- ence as to how slowly the runs may be coming in. Nothing is so dispiriting or exasperating as to watch such a game, when over after over is played with the same studied accuracy and precision, but with a blank score, or at most a rate of eight or nine runs an hour. No other kind of batting is so dis- mal to bowl to, nor so wearying to the bowler. Such cricket is not noble. Such professionals hold their audience mainly because they have a circle of friends, admirers and imitators present. But such a listless game is to many an Englishman an ideal of holiday enjoyment. Such people would resent fast scoring as disturbing to the digestion. The slow movements of the batters are soothing and delightful. Complaints are made that with such play batting has become too cautious and mechanical, to the loss of physical exercise in the game. In informal games among amateurs, fast bowlers are seldom seen. Ivong catches in the field are being made impossible, not only by the play, but by the increas- ing smallness of the boundaries. There is little risk of being ' ' run out. ' ' When the batsman in old times would have been running his hardest for four or five, he now adjusts his pads and talks to the umpire, while some one in the crowd fetches the ball and throws it in. 176 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. A county match batsman usually finds a slow bowler at each end. The wicket keeper will, if he is lucky, get one ball to every four overs. The play consists of the bowler tossing balls of every variety of length, which the batsman deals with according as contempt, fury, or caution predomi- nates. The worst of it is that this spiritless and mechanical style of play, which thus converts an animated and exciting game into a speculative business, is not confined only to where profes- sionals rule. Unpunctuality in commencing a match and dawdling over lunches and between innings often add slowness and want of life. This is not so noticeable in first-class matches, but it is common to provincial games. In towns, for instance, where the clerks and apprentices who make up the local eleven have only their Satur- day half-holiday in which to play, it would be supposed that they would be eager to begin as soon as possible after the hour, two o'clock, so as to get all the available daylight. Nothing could be further from their intentions. Three o'clock has usually struck before the heavy crick- eter, presumably the professional or his imitator, saunters leisurely to the ground, smoking ciga- rettes in a lordly fashion and followed by a small boy carrying the cricket bag. The player marches slowly to the pavilion and condescends to put on CRICKET. 177 liis flannels, which appear to have seen consider- ably more cricket than their wearer. At last, after half-past three, he strolls into the field and the play commences. It is continued, in more or less desultory fashion and without any startling epi- sodes, until six, when exhausted nature evidently requires refreshment; for whether the one-inning match is finished or not, and though it is still broad daylight, the players retire in a body for tea. Next week the local papers contain an account of this brilliant performance, with the average of the chief performer, who is usually a stout professional rather the worse for wear. And yet in the face of all this Englishmen wonder how we can take so much interest in a game which is so largely in the hands of professionals as base-ball. It is against such abuses as these, which in cricket we have not reached in America, that many English gentlemen players are trying to contend, as opposed to the spirit of the game. They instance as better cricket and more delight- ful, the sight of a group of English small boys playing the game in their own free and primitive fashion, a half-dozen bare-footed urchins on some rough ground or damp meadow by the river side, showing immense sport and gusto, but using the most inadequate apparatus. This is often a dilapi- dated old bat, three sticks of unequal length and a ball that is bursting at the seams. The eagerness 12 178 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. of the players, tempered by an almost judicial gravity at critical moments, is delightful to con- template. They are all so absorbed in the game that they will not notice the spectator. Their bowling is modeled after the popular champion of the day. The field is placed chiefly on the side that will keep balls out of the river. There will be a continuous running accompaniment of shouts and yells at each successful stroke, making alto- gether a lively and delightful scene. The game thus played, as contrasted with the second-class one before described, is far more interesting and far better for athletic development. As we were tempted to leave our province and give a few technical directions by the very concise couplet on horsemanship, so in this case we again exceed our limits to show the positions of the players in a game of cricket, for the reason that they are all so cleverly defined in the accompany- ing caricature [Fig. 2i]. The old cricketer will recognize them all and will vouch for their correctness. A word more on the pleasures of cricket. Friend- ship is a good thing and also anything that pro- motes friendship. The friendship of cricketers is proverbial. Some say it is the green fields, the bright sunshine, the emulation side by side that does it. Others say it is because the game itself tends to make conceit and selfishness vanish, and 180 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. humility and consideration for others flourish, because they are fully appreciated. The players, if they play the game as it should be played, play side by side for the common good, not every one for himself, or like the man who works for his individual record with an eye to future engage- ments. An example of unselfish play was shown by the Irish players in America, by whose active help a close game was finished adversely to them- selves in the last half minute allowed for the play, they hurrying in their man when they could have made a draw by an opposite course. The one decisive run was only gained because the last Irish- man was sent in by his captain without even giving him time to put on his leg-guards. What friend- ship could be more enduring than one built on the love of others rather than self. Foot Ball Foot-ball. We come now to foot-ball, one of the survivals of primitive sport with a ball, and one in which nothing but a ball is used. It is played without club or bat or other apparatus of any kind. It comes down from very remote antiquity and is probably an altered form of an ancient Roman game of hand-ball. "Thou base foot-ball player," says a character in King lycar to a man who has been tripped up. The game is much older than cricket. It has made such strides in late years that it is doubtful whether in England, the home of cricket, the national game is now cricket or foot- ball. The old game was played by a party of men, sometimes including women, who were very much in the form of a mob, which was bound to get a ball, a blown-up bladder probably, somewhere, somehow, or by some means, no matter how. Any number of players took part. The field was made to correspond with the number of players. At the English Shrove Tuesday games, the day set apart by common consent when everybody must play foot-ball, the sides were often whole parishes and (183) 184 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. the goals on each side were the widely separated parish churches belonging to two rival parishes. On these Shrove Tuesdays it was customary in towns to close houses and board up windows from fear of damage. The game has been interdicted time and again, as a reminder of which we find certain English towns to this day holding to con- cessions, giving special rights to put down a foot- ball in the main streets on Shrove Tuesday. The game has not always been interdicted for its roughness only, though James I. ordered the heir apparent not to play it for that reason, but for another reason altogether. It was too popular and interfered with other things. Edward III. pro- hibited it because it interfered with the practice of archery, on which the power of the nation at that time depended. It is curious to note at this time similar regulations of English foot-ball clubs pro- hibiting the game from being played in the cricket season, because its popularity interferes with cricket. The ancient game was played in many ways. The common people played it in one way. The schools desired more skill and intellect, and at each school headquarters the game was altered to suit local ideas. Nearly all these divergencies have now been sifted down to two prominent styles, the Rugby game, adopted by the Rugby Association on the basis of the game as it was played at Rugby FOOT-BALL. 185 School, and the Association game formulated by other players who did not play the Rugby game, who were organized before the Rugby Association. The Rugby game is the scientific game, a game of military resource and strategy, a game of chess on the green sward. The Association game is of more value to those who cannot devote the same amount of time and preparation. Rugby foot-ball as played in America, mainly by schools and colleges, is not the Rugby game of to-day in England. Previous to its adoption our colleges sometimes played a haphazard game very much like what the older generations remember to have played on Thanksgiving afternoons. Shortly after the first Rugby rules were adopted in England, the Americans took them up from the printed copy, never having seen a game. They did not know how to interpret the rules and met with sev- eral difficulties. They then set to work to remedy these to suit themselves, with the result that a variant of the game was produced. The later Rugby rules in England have since themselves been altered which makes still further variations. Thus we have at least three prominent varieties, English Rugby, American Rugby and Association. The English game presents more variety still. Several of the great public schools which have gradually evolved their own type refuse to give it up, they being in England where precedent is 186 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. everything. At Harrow and Westminster two separate and dissimilar games exist, while at Eton there are two other widely dissimilar games in the same school, the "Field" and the "Wall" game. According to the Saturday Review^ there is no game like foot-ball, none which so completely and continuously engages all the combative instincts of mankind, and at the same time kindles so warm a feeling of active alliance and zealous co-operation between those whom it binds together for an hour or for a season. As the game asks a large amount of self-control, there is no better school for develop- ing a man or boy's command of his passions. Con- trary to perhaps much sage advice on the subject, let it be said that if a boy has a naturally quick temper, foot-ball is not a game he should avoid, but one he should practice. He will be made to control himself If there is a flash of temper for a moment it is usually only like a passing cloud. Anything like mean or shabby conduct receives its own punishment on the spot, as it is always marked by the strong disapproval of the crowd. Like other manly sports, foot-ball is a school for discipline in the rules of honor and fair play. If a man is naturally timid or lacks presence of mind, if he has a fair share of physical force, foot- ball will rouse his sense of manhood, give him FOOT-BALL. 187 " nerve " and make him self-reliant. A cool head, quickness of decision and, of course, great pluck, are the main virtues of a foot-ball player. The pluck needed in the competitions of life is just the pluck demanded by foot- ball; and the young man who has learned to bear the brunt of a foot-ball contest, can fight a battle anywhere. Sir Walter Scott says of a game of foot-ball : Then up, lads, and to it, though sharp be the weather, And if by mischance you should happen to fall, There are worse things in life than a tumble on heather; And life is itself but a game of foot-ball. The game, in both the Association and Rugby forms, is gaining popularity in America. It bids fair to become a national sport. It is getting a following outside of college and school circles and every year larger audiences attend the games. The combination of discipline, individual skill and strength which the game calls for, the splendid finesse^ the elements of personal combat which always delight the savage instinct still lingering in the breast even of the most civilized among us, are qualities which account for the growing popu- larity, and they promise a vogue greater than now enjoyed. In a few years we shall probably go to great length as in base-ball, and have in all great cities professional elevens, when thousands will gather to shout themselves hoarse at the exploits of hired rushers and backs. 188 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. If we thus transfer the base-ball conditions to the foot-ball field, before the kind of public that now goes to the base-ball games with professional players, it is a question whether it will be in a line of improvement in the game as a means of physical culture. There is so much of the savage left in the average citizen that nothing draws like a prize fight. It will be the slugging matches in foot-ball that will count. The fist and not the open hand as now will be the popular form, and the managers will respond to the demand. Possi- bly in the end the brutalizing effects will become such that like the prize fight it will have to be prohibited by law. Against such a result all the friends of the sport and of physical culture should unite. Now a word as to what the game itself is. Mr. Gale's definition of the Rugby game is that "the ball is like a mutton chop which A is about to devour with a keen appetite, which ^-snatches from him, when A collars B^ and B throws it to C, who is collared by Z>, and so on by E^ till every one is collared by each other, and the mutton gets thrown out of the crowd and a passing dog bolts with it and no one gets it at all." He thinks also, that whatever the points of the game may be, which are too complicated for any but experts to master, be they what they may, the game itself is a fine manly sport and very exciting to look at. FOOT-BALL, 189 It has lost nothing in interest by being divested of some of the rougher play of the past, which has been discontinued by mutual consent. Mr. Walter Camp's description of the same form of the game in America is slightly clearer: " It is played by two teams of eleven men eaeh\ upon a field 330 feet long and 160 feet wide, at either end of which are goal posts with a cross-bar. "The ball, which is like a large leather ^^%^ is placed in the centre of this field and each team endeavors to drive it in the direction of the oppo- nent's goal line, where any scoring must be done. Goals and touch-downs are all that count. A goal may be had by kicking the ball in a certain way over the cross-bar of the opponent's goal. A touch-down is obtained by touching the ball to the ground behind the line of the goal. So, in either case, the ball must cross the end of the field in some way to make a score. The sole object of all the struggles in the field is to advance the ball to where scoring is possible. The white lines on the field are only to assist the referee in determining how far the ball moves." The difference between Rugby and Association foot-ball, is mainly in the fact that in the former any player may handle and carry the ball under certain rules, running with it at times, like in the ancient Roman game of hand-ball. In the Asso- ciation game, only one man can touch hands to it, 190 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. it being a kicking game. When feet do not suffice, butting with the head is resorted to. The Associa- tion ball is round. That form of the game has grown to such magnitude in England, where spe- cial clubs exist everywhere, to represent towns, counties and whatnot, that a regular professional class has already sprung up, the professionals play- ing in entire teams or with amateurs. That form of the game is in its infancy in America. It deserves attention. It is said that the Association game is the one game in which amateurs can always hold their own with professionals. Though prime physical condi- tion is necessary as in Rugby, the time required to keep in practice need not occupy a lifetime, though the game has grown to be almost as scien- tific as Rugby. It has the same opportunities for team work. As in cricket, the foot-ball player who plays for himself and not his side, loses many points in a game where the main feature is passing a ball to a friend, who is in a comparatively open space and better situated for getting it away from opposing foes in front. Says Mr. Gale, referring to English audiences, "it is curious to watch how quickly the lookers-on appreciate unselfishness. They roar, ' well passed ' when a player is content to turn the ball over to his neighbor, who is in better posi- tion for forwarding it; but there is on the other FOOT-BALL. 191 hand, an agonizing cry of ' shoot ! shoot !' when a player tries to keep a ball to himself on a chance of kicking a goal himself and not letting one of his own side do it instead." Any way, foot-ball in both kinds, which has the advantage that it can be played outdoors when base-ball cannot, deserves the thanks of thousands of young men and of those to whom they belong for promoting health by exercise, often in the dead of winter, and for sending them out into the pure air and giving: them the hardihood to face wet and cold with no protection but a jersey and a pair of flannel trousers. The game must be attractive, for it takes a great deal to make a man willing to take a roll in the mud, and at the same time retain the best temper in the world. The fact that the game is thus played in winter has at times raised a cry that it is unhealthy, because men have died from exposure during foot- ball playing in wintry days. Doubtless a winter's sport gives greater chance for such mishaps than a summer one, but the mishaps are not due only to the game, but also to the carelessness that has fol- lowed. A foot-baller cannot play without getting warm, and if he change his clothes before the warmth has gone he has nothing to fear. Upon similar reasoning walking along a road in the rain could be proved to be more dangerous than playing foot-ball on a cold day. For every one who may 192 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. have been harmed by foot-ball, a thousand have benefited, which should be considered at any rate. The base-ball player can have no better prepara- tion for his ball season than playing the Association game. It brightens the eye and steadies the nerve. It does away with the getting into condition neces- sary at the beginning of every base-ball season for those who have not the use of indoor cages in which to practice base-ball playing in winter, in the latest improved style. The game benefits the athlete in other fields in many ways, particularly in wind. It develops strength of wind instead of knocking it out of a man. The Rugby game has been called a succession of emergencies or war without the quarrel. There is no sport known which by its very nature so mimics the art of war. The tactics, the formation, the strategy, the attack and defence, are all war- like arts. Many commanders have said that a good foot-ball player makes a good soldier. It is certain that all the conditions of success which can be shown from books to have been important consid- erations in any particular battle, can be duplicated in actual life on the foot-ball field. The opportu- nity for original maneuvers are unbounded. The more strategic team can always discount a team of superior avoirdupois. Foot-ball also gives good schooling to the soldier in tractability, habits of command and co-operation, and in ability to labor FOOT-BALL. 193 under defeat, which are all of value in any walk of life. Mr. Johnson, in the Century^ draws attention to the military character of the game, and says it has become more scientific and difficult to play on that account, and has, in fact, become entirely a game of strategy. He says: " It can best be comprehended by comparing the foot-ball field to a battlefield, and the respective sides to two armies managed on military principles. Four arms of the foot-ball service has been devel- oped. The rush line is the infantry, who must be agile, very fair runners and quick at tackling. ' ' The quarter-back answers very much to the quartermaster's department. He takes the ball from the centre-rush and serves it out to the players back of him, who are to do the running. He may be smaller than the rushers, but must be active, clear-headed and capable of meeting very hard usage. ' ' Behind the quarter-back are the half-backs, the cavalry of the team. They are the runners par excellence — must be runners. They must make a straight forward dash for an opening in the enemy's line, or flank the opposing line. " Furthest in the rear is the eleventh player, the 'full-back.' He constitutes the artillery of the team. He relieves too great pressure by an oppor- tune punt over the heads of the line, and so carries .13 194 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. the conflict into the enemy's territory. When one appreciates the great military character of the game, he will see the full beauty of the team play, before which all individual play will pale. He can then appreciate the real strategy with which the oppos- ing captains handle the respective arms of the ser- vice, putting cavalry against infantry here, scattering cavalry by infantry there, or using artillery to search out weak points." Mr. Shaler, in ih^ Atlantic^ thinks that "in no other form of activity during the time of peace can we hope to gain so valuable military training for our youth. It appears to be better to bear with any little dangers we may incur in the game in order to retain a system of discipline or instruction, the peculiar training of which is afforded by it alone. To the ordinary well-conditioned young man the game has eminent advantages. It teaches him to keep a cool head in moments of great activity or physical danger. In it he learns to take consider- able risks of bodily pain without hesitation, and to combine his actions with that of his mates. It cultivates swift judgment, endurance and self-con- fidence, without which even the naturally brave can never learn to meet danger. ' ' The physical dangers of the game have now been largely eliminated or can be. They should not be considered more than we would consider parallel cases in other sports. The hunter will FOOT-BALL. 195 not stop his sport because someone gets hurt, or until feather beds are placed on either side of all fences, nor the sportsman allow shooting to be out- lawed because somebody does not understand how to handle a gun. Skating will never come under the ban because people will venture on ice which is too thin. As to the physical benefits of the game when played only for the sake of the exercise and recrea- tion it affords, there cannot be two opinions, always provided that the players are physically fit for the work they undertake. It is as unreason- able for any one who is unfit for violent exercise to play and expect no evil results, as for a man who has not learned to swim to expect safety when thrown into deep water. Compared with other sports statistics show that foot-ball is not more dangerous to life and limb. The features of the game, which require perfect physical condition in order to have the great endurance necessary, are the same which give it its great value in physical culture for those who have the time to go into the play properly. The same features are what have made the game so popular in rushing, pushing America. They are similar to those which made base-ball and not cricket our choice, and which have now made foot-ball a full strong transplanting — a taking root of a foreign exotic, and not simply a hot-house 196 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. culture. These features include constant occu- pation for the player and audience during the time the game is in progress. To the players there is no sitting idle, for instance, while the rest of a side are batting. The game also is not neces- sarily long nor costly, so that if time, money and physical development count for anything, its place should be a high one. But it is simply madness for any one to take up such foot-ball playing as requires great powers of endurance, as in Rugby games by college teams, unless he is in every sense of the word perfectly sound in wind and limb and is in good physical training. What few fatal foot-ball accidents have occurred, have been mainly due to an attempt to play the game as it is played by trained teams, without the requisite training. In training for it, the play is first made short and gentle and kept under careful supervision until the men begin to harden to it. Then the playing is gradually lengthened and made more severe as the men became able to endure it. By the time the season nears its close, the men are able to bear with impunity treatment which would be fatally dangerous to players not in condition. Foot-ball players are usually brought to such a degree of physical perfection that it is a pleasure to watch them. They are taught to fall, when a fall is inevitable, in such a way as to retain control FOOT-BALL. 197 of the ball and without risking a broken bone or a dislocation. In that way what seems a frightful fall not only produces no bruises whatever, but the fallen player has to be held down to prevent him from rising to his feet again at once to make off with the ball. Accidents will at times happen, of course, but their happening has been put out of the range of possibility as far as possible. ' ' Warding off," which done rapidly, as it usually is, appears to be slugging, is now done with the open hand, or should be. The adoption of a rule to that effect has done away with the slugging which was once really so objectionable a feature of the sport. The consideration of the question of preparation for the game, and the necessity for prime physical condition, opens the question of how much good a business man, for instance, can get out of the Rugby game. In answer to such a query, a retired college player at once answered: " None whatever. The game so altered as not to require condition and time to get it, would be a game of no interest what- ever." Hence, it comes that college and school men, who can plan their time to suit it, can get greater advantage from the Rugby game. The Association game, though now largely sci- entific also, will better suit the wants of many. Of course, it is to be expected that a player of the more intricate game will discountenance the other. 198 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. Ill the Rugby game the division of labor is now so great that a man must not only train, but train for the particular position he occupies. Hence, to be an all-round athlete, the Rugby foot-ball player should adopt some other forms of athletics as well. The rushers must be men of wind, the back and half-backs need more strength and endurance. In any position, however, the player, who must use his muscles powerfully, needs strong lungs and a sound heart. Size and proportion are matters of less moment than good physical condition. Mr. Hodge, in OtUiiig^ thinks that as the posi- tions on an eleven are so many, and the demands of each are so different, there is room for every variety of player. The two half-backs and the full- back may be indifferently large or small, of stocky build or more sparely formed. It is well, though, to have one large man behind the line. The quar- ter-back must be a player of unusual dexterity, precision and self-reliance. He can be small, but should be very strong. A player of considerable weight can find a position in the rush line, accord- ingly as he is heavier or lighter, quicker or less active. If a fast runner and a respectable player he is available for an end rusher, or if possessing, perhaps, less speed but great agility, he might be good for a right or left tackier. If quite heavy but dexterous, at least in the upper extremities, he can fill right or left guard. If strong enough, even FOOT- BALL. 199 though slow, a player of good head should be able to play in the centre at snapback. To show what the game will do in physical de- velopment, and also to show the prime physical condition of a typical foot-ball player, reference may be made to the accompanying illustrations. Fig. 22 is a young Harvard player who usually filled the position of centre-rush. He evidently under- stood the art of physical development too well to confine himself to one pursuit, as he was likewise a rowing man. This was also the case with the young Yale athlete shown in Fig. 23, a right-guard of a noted eleven. The superb muscular development here shown, Dr. Sargent considers due mostly to the gymnasium and foot-ball, not to rowing, though the latter con- tributes largely to the development of the back and legs, and slightly to the arms and chest. Foot-ball is the game to test a man physically. In the punching and hauling, the jostling, the struggle for supremacy, few muscles of the body are inactive. The legs are almost constantly in motion, and the arms, chest, abdomen and back get their full share of activity. The soreness and lameness in those regions of the body after a fierce conflict, is due as often to great muscular effort as to colli- sion with opposing rushers. We have spoken of the life friendships that result from cricket. Foot-ball often affects a young man's 200 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. after life considerably. In the intensity of foot-ball competition, everything concerning a prominent player is known to his rivals. They canvas all his characteristics. If he is a young student he knows that he will meet his rivals in after life. As a foot- ball player he is to leave a reputation among his contemporaries which later may be of value or a hindrance. He is not over-anxious to make that reputation one for foul dealing, ugly temper, or brutality. Such a reputation a man will carry with him to his grave. In our civil war the generals on both sides gauged their opponents and acted accord- ing to how they thought there opponents would act, judging by the reputations made and the char- acters shown by the opposing generals when fel- low cadets at the " Point." The question is often asked if foot-ball in colleges does not cause students to spend more time than they should spare on the game and its training. In answer it may be said that the requirements of the college courses are every year making it less possible for a man to waste time and stay in college. The men are now more weeded out, particularly in the freshman year. The practical effect of foot- ball on a student who is a player is simply to get more work out of him than he would otherwise give. The managers of a foot-ball team, if they see a promising ball man neglecting his college work for the game, act as monitors upon him, and FIG. 23. FOOT-BALL. 201 keep him at his work, to prevent him from losing his place in college and consequently on the team also. They can often do in this line what a pro- fessor cannot. Such a student is not allowed to waste time. There is no mercy shown him by his fellow foot-ball athletes. The influences which fellow-students can bring to bear, the expedients which they can resort to, to exact study from men who do not incline to it, can only partially be under- stood outside. It may be of interest to compare with those already given, the opinions of Drs. J. William White and Horatio C. Wood, both eminent univer- sity professors in medical departments, who as phy- sicians and foot-ball experts discuss the game in the North America7i Reviezv. They investigate the subject to find if the physical advantages thereby gained compensate for the injuries received, and also, as professors, to ascertain if the game tends to mental improvement or the opposite. They re- fute the allegations often made as to the demoral- izing influences of college foot-ball. In relation to the first particular they claim that foot-ball is the outdoor sport for bringing all muscles into play. They write: ''Certainly whatever physical good can be re- ceived from any form of college athletics can be obtained from foot-ball, while above all others it tends to develop self-control, coolness, fertility of 202 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. resource and promptness of execution in sudden emergencies involving perhaps danger. In other words, no known game compares with foot-ball in the development in the individual of those qualities which, while they are sometimes spoken of as the 'military virtues,' are of enormous value to their possessor in all the struggles of life. ' ' These are a few of the advantages mentioned. They also state on the authority of Dr. Sergent, of Cambridge; Dr. Seaver, of New Haven; Dr. Mac- Donald, of Princeton, and Dr. White, of Pennsyl- vania, that "no instance of any permanent injury to a player had occurred in all the long series of contests waged during the last ten years on the foot-ball field." This is a brief statement of the result of their investigations as physicians. As professors whose duty it is to see that no game is encouraged that interferes with the mental development of their students, they find that at Harvard, Princeton. Yale, Pennsylvania and Cornell the athletes are far above the class average, and in this connection add: ' ' If we were selecting from any college the young men most likely to endure the strains of business or professional life in this country and to score suc- cesses, we would be disposed to estimate the actual working superiority of the foot-ball players far over their classmates." It would not be proper to close this chapter FOOT-BALL. 203 without mention of an exceedingly interesting form of the game, which, with all our fondness for nov- elty, it is surprising has not been attempted here, namely, the ' ' Wall Game ' ' of Eton. As before noticed, peculiar forms of foot-ball still exist at the English schools of Winchester, Harrow and Eton. The game at Winchester is particularly noticeable to the spectatoi by reason of the two high parallel walls of wire netting which enclose the bounds for the entire length, and which form a feature of play in the game. The game at Harrow has its own characteristics. The foot-ball situation at Eton is unique. At this school the playing of foot-ball is compulsory. Of the two games played there the most popular in point of the number of students who play it is the '^ Field " game, from which fact it has been claimed that it is the principal game of the two; whereas the fact is that only the collegers or King's schol- ars, those on the foundation, are allowed to play the ' ' wall ' ' through the whole course. The Op- pidans, or pay scholars, who outnumber the collegers by over nine hundred against seventy, are only allowed to play that form of the game during the last part of the school course, after they have, as it were, graduated from the *' Field " game. In Mr. Marshall's exhaustive foot-ball treatise he claims that the Eton '' Field " game is the best yet invented in many ways. 204 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. The more interesting and unique "Wall" game is possibly a creature of circumstances, because the long brick wall against which it is played was ready at hand. A virtue had to be made of a necessity. But it is claimed that the game was originally played indoors of winter evenings in the long pas- sages by students in slippers, from which it was transferred to the wall as a makeshift. The long brick wall forms one side of the foot-ball play- ground, and a parallel mark or line about six yards from it, the other. The great "Wall" contest of the year is the match on St. Andrew's day between the Oppidan and Colleger teams. The records of this yearly match go back to 1845. ^^^ sight of this yearly game is very characteristic. The dense line of spectators, at least a thousand strong, are without the rope on one side only of the ground, the side opposite the wall, and without the limits of the picture. Fig. 24. The wall itself holds some vis- itors, former players probably, and a few students. The crowd includes the smallest boy in the school and the headmaster, or possibly the provost him- self. The game is spoken of by some as complicated. Others claim that it is simplicity itself, those who understand it, of course. Though it may be sim- ple, and the pure essence of foot-ball, unadulterated and unadorned by any of the later additions which FOOT-BALL. 205 have been added to it elsewhere, the "Wall " game does require a long apprenticeship to play it well. But this apprenticeship is fully supplied at a school which fosters athleticism to such an extent that it has time and again been roundly abused for its efforts in physical culture, which it has been claimed are excessive. Golf, Lawn-tennis, etc. XL Golf, IvAwn Tennis, Lacrosse, Polo and Kin- dred Sports. Golf is an ancient Scottish game, ancient enough to have shared the royal edicts of excommunication issued against foot-ball. It has won its way to popularity on its merits. The English game of cricket has made little headway in Scotland. The Scottish game, however, has now overrun England. In America, we as yet know but little of it, more's the pity, for we thereby lose much innocent, healthful and inexpensive recreation. The game is so simple that it is a wonder how it manages to develop so much enthusiasm and fascination. It is very seldom that a person who has commenced the study of this fascinating pursuit tires of it, or fails to follow it. Golf is not so slow a game as cricket nor so fast as base-ball. It can be played from the cradle to the grave, and from year's end to year's end. Weather need not interfere with it. On snow, on mud, on dry sand it is equally practicable if the player so desires. The English cricketer sneeringly says of golf that it is a very good game in its way and that he 14 (209) 210 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. may take to it in his old age when he can no longer stoop to stop a cricket ball. The Scotchman in return says of cricket that it is a very good game for boys. The fact remains that while young men and maidens may enjoy it, it is a game that an old man can likewise fully relish at a time when cricket or other games become a toil — the time when the man realizes in relation to cricket fielding that the further the ground, or the harder to reach it by stooping, the nearer the grave. The game offers advantages to men with limited time for recreation, and it is a game in which a man can always be at work, always active. In other ball games there is a season of activity, followed by a season of inaction. In golf, the exer- cise is continuous, and not so violent as to require frequent rest. Golf is a walk, a constitutional, with something else to do at the same time, and with strong exercise for the arms added to that of the legs and other portions of the body exercised in walking. Though the grounds required are large, they can accommodate the active play of not merely eighteen or twenty-two players, but of a hundred, and many different games at once if necessary. You can always find the chance to play. You do not have to be on a particular nine or eleven in order to get the exercise. You can always find congenial company on a golf link. Athletics usually, like misfortune, make 212 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. US acquainted with strange fellows. In golf, kindred spirits seem to flock together like birds of a feather. It is a game that every one can play. It is for both sexes. It is not beneath the notice of any one. It is for all sorts and kinds of people — the strong and the weak, the active and the lame, the aged and the young, the rich and the poor, the GOI.F. IN A STONE-BUNKER. clergyman and the infidel — for man, woman and child. It is the most sociable game known. It is a game of competition, not of antagonistic struggle. A crowning merit is that it is one of the few sports in which too much is not physically injurious. Golf has been described as consisting of putting little balls into little holes with instruments very GOLF. 213 poorly adapted for the purpose. This would seem to be the case to a person who has never played the game. A player knows by experience that the statement is a fallacy. GOI.F. IN WHINS. In golf each player has a small, hard ball of his own, which he strikes with a stick, one of several kinds, each suited to a certain kind of stroke or to certain circumstances under which the stroke has to be made. These strokes are made while the ball The illustrations of golf are from the Century Magazine, by permission. 214 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. is quiescent, with the intention of ultimately put- ting it into a small hole. This he wishes to do with as few strokes as possible, at least in fewer than his antagonist. If this were done on a smooth lawn it would be comparatively dull sport. But if the links, or the distances between the holes, are say four hundred yards each, though the distance is not uniform, on a circuitous course of say from three to five miles in length, and over irregular ground containing all manner of obstacles called "hazards," and it must be done according to certain rules, it becomes a scientific job of some magnitude. A sufficient space to play the game can always be had, when no other offers, on the beach at the seashore, only in that case artificial obstacles, cor- responding to rough ground, guUeys, ruts, stony ground, etc. , have to be manufactured. An unfre- quented country road, combined with certain fields, with all the cart-ruts, unbroken stone stretches and grassy patches, can be made to do, though on many a suburban place there is ample room without inter- fering with other use of the ground; that is, of course, for an informal game. With sufficient width the course need not be so long. It can be made to return either in the form of a circle or more nearly in the same line as the outward track. If neces- sary, the distance can be gained with half the number of holes by making the circuit twice. GOLF. 215 The game not only entails the most invigorating and healthy action of arms and legs, with outdoor work of course (legs, arms and brain share the work), but it is a series of perpetual changes. Problem after problem, difficulty after difficulty, unexpectedly arise, which the player is called upon to surmount by cool judgment and prompt action. And as these difficulties, subject as they are to the rules of chance, may never occur twice under sim- ilar circumstances, there is ample room for judg- ment. The adoption of a system of handicapping, as the game is usually played, makes it possible for an inferior player to play against a superior and keep up interest. In that way the best player is not always the winner. The exercise of golf can be regulated to the player. A ' ' single ' ' game, one player on each side, which can be played on the same grounds with many other " singles," or with games of other numbers, involves twice the exercise of a " four- some," in which two partners alternate. There is one element of danger in the game, against which precaution must always be taken. The ball is not always moved along the ground, but at times in the air. Sometimes ' ' lofter ' ' shots, or drives through the air, are made of two hundred yards or over, by means of the peculiar shaped striking sticks, which handle the ball by catching it as if in a hollow or spoon, the effect of which is 216 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. very much the same as that gained by the boy's pointed stick with which he sends a green apple, which he has stuck on the end, soaring through the air, after whirling it around his head, jerking the apple off at a tangent at the proper point. The balls are smaller than a lawn tennis ball, and very hard. When they go through the air with the velocity of a rifle-ball it may chance that the heads of other players who are ahead may be in the way. To obviate this danger as far as possible the return course should not be close to the outward track, and the regular rule should be obeyed which pro- hibits a player from striking a ball which has just been taken out of a hole, until the player ahead has played his second shot, and which also prohibits a party from using the '' green," or region about a hole, while another party is engaged in ' ' putting ' ' into that hole. It is also the custom to call out *'fore," which is the recognized danger signal, when about to make a long shot; and in regular clubs, the players wear red coats for the purpose of making themselves as conspicuous as possible at a distance, as an additional precaution against accident. As to the expense of the game, that is one of its recommendations. An average set of tools costs very little, from $12.00 to $15.00 perhaps, ^and arrangements for the use of a ground can be made inexpensively. In the neighborhood of large GOLF. 217 cities, the latter requireinent can be easier obtained by organization into a chib. Abroad the main SPKCIMKNS OF' GOI^F ClvUBS. I, Wooden putter ; 2, Cleek ; 3, Mashy ; 4, Driver ; 5, Short spoon ; 6, Niblick ; 7, Iron putter ; 8, I/Ong spoon ; 9, Sand-iron ; 10, Brassy. expense lies more in the "caddie," who is a very young or a very old man and as his name implies, 218 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. Scotch preferred. The caddie carries for you the bag of numerous and variously shaped clubs, and hands them to you as you need them, being in other ways a help or hindrance according to his disposi- tion, for he is often as loquacious as a barber. It is bad form, impossible in club play, to do without a caddie. This important matter has been well looked after in America, in the few places where the sport is attempted. Before ground, players, or apparatus, the picturesque caddie, one in the employ of each player, must be secured. Whether he is Irish, African or German he is called ' ' caddie, ' ' whether he objects to the name or not, and with- out him the game cannot go on. The Scotch caddies on Scotch and English public golf links rule the roost. At St. Andrew's, Scotland, it requires as much ingenuity to circumvent a cad- die's plans and desires on reaching the grounds as to get through a crowd of city hackmen at a railway station. The art of playing is to get as much enjoyment out of the game as the caddie will allow you to have, after he has palmed himself off on you without regard to whether he is the caddie you want or not. A visitor to St. Andrew's remarks : "Here is the national game of golf played to perfection. Over the breezy links hundreds of enthusiastic players may be daily seen, accompanied by their attendant satellites — the 'caddies.' It is 220 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. often said of the British that the vagaries of the weather — which is, as a rule, always bad, and some- times worse — is their chief topic of conversation. In St. Andrew's, however, the weather has to play second fiddle, for golf reigns supreme. To the uninitiated, the constant discussion of ' hazards, ' ' bunkers ' and ' putting greens, ' cleeks and clubs, wonderful 'drives' — exemplifying the golfer's motto, ' Far but Sure ' — and the racy sayings of caddies — is only a continuous stream of jargon, but it is jargon indulged in by all, gentle and simple. Old men and women, stately bishops and merry schoolboys — no one is too old nor too dignified to join. It makes stout people thin and thin people stout; and if one cannot enthuse over golf he is to be pitied. And how picturesque are those links in winter, when the students, in their long, bright scarlet gowns, flit to and fro across the dull gray landscape until it seems to glow and brighten as we watch. " lyike everything belonging to the town, golf is of old. In 1450 James II. passed a law against it as 'unprofitable sport,' but, like all persecution, it served but to make its roots the stronger; and, as we walk homeward by the 'Scores' and the 'Butts,' reminiscences of the days when golf had its rival in archery, we cannot but be impressed, as we gaze on the gray towers of this ancient city — the suc- cessive capital of Culdees, Roman Catholics and GOLF. 221 Presbyterians — that from it and elsewhere in broad Scotland have gone forth to foreign lands brave and patriotic sons, veritable St. Andrew's brothers — givers, doers, helpers in all good works. ' ' Some of the few golf clubs and grounds in this country may be found at Newport, at . Islip and Southampton, ly. I., and at Chevy Chase, near Washington, D. C. The one at Southampton has a club-house ideally placed among the low Shinne- cock Hills, with the blue waters of Peconic Bay on one hand, Southampton Bay on the other, and the faint roar of the surf coming from the ocean beyond. The club-house, a Colonial-looking build- ing, whose shingled sides are seasoned by the wind and rain and sun of two seasons, is set upon the highest of the low, rolling hills betweeen the rail- road and Peconic Bay. Several acres immediately surround the club-house. Here and there white or red flags flutter in the brisk sea breeze, and painted signs on slender iron posts stand sentinel near mysterious green boxes. ' ' On a recent Satur- day morning," says Harper's Bazaar^ "if some anxious Sister Anne had chanced to be recon- noitring along the Shinnecock road at about the hour of 10.30 a. m., she would have seen a mighty spinning of high cart wheels and a great glitter of harness, and a blaze of scarlet coats along the white road to the club-house. It was the day for the regular monthly tournament, and the events of the 222 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. next two hours would liave been an invaluable object-lesson for tbose who do not appreciate golf. If any one could have ' stood tiptoe upon a little hill ' and watched the swing of a pair of firm round arms as a bright-eyed girl struck off from the first ' tee, ' and then have followed two good players over the links, across which came the breath of the sea, and around which lay all the beauties of a perfect day in a charming country — well, if any one could have done that and not have asked the price of golf sticks and how to get into the club, he or she would better make haste to the nearest doctor, for, verily, 'twould be a poor sign of a healthy mind in a healthy body. Golf is a game not so much of strength as of skill. The ' putting little balls into little holes' is, so far as it goes, a quite accurate description of a sport which has enlisted the en- thusiasm of the brightest men and women in Eng- land, and is fast making proselytes of the same classes in America. The club at Southampton is an excellent model both in its person7iel and in the facilities for playing with which it is provided. There are on its grounds two sets of links, one for men and one for women. The men's links com- prise eleven holes, and are two and a half miles in length, at the same time covering much more diffi- cult ground than the women's links, which com- prise nine holes and are only a mile and a half in length.'' LAWN TENNIS. 223 lyAWN TknNIS. There is one phrase which the textbooks always apply to lawn tennis: "There is no sport existing more calculated to develop the muscles." But we must remember that this phrase or its equivalent is found at the beginning of every book or treatise on every other sport as well. The only difference in this case is that lawn tennis does develop the mus- cles. If, beside, we say that it affords exercise to a busy man in a short space of time, no one will question the statement. Among its advantages as an exercise is the fact that it is not beyond the limits of a moderate purse or ordinary facilities. Unlike its namesake, Tennis proper, or Court Ten- nis, as it is now distinguished, no elaborate struc- ture is necessary. A lawn-tennis ground may be had and kept in order without much outlay, and a racket and balls last well. The courts are small, not too much for a man to care for himself, and they can be extemporized on almost any small lot which may happen to be near one's own front door. When one gets to the age when it does not seem to pay to take a train for the cricket field, put on flan- nels, play, take a shower-bath, and so home again, one looks favorably on lawn tennis. In addition to being of value to busy men it has been a veri- table boon to girls needing exercise. That it is good exercise may be gathered from the statement that no man can play it for more 224 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. than two hours without excessive fatigue, but as an exercise it can be limited at pleasure and made invigorating. The game is attractive in its simplicity. The attraction can be increased by the addition of toiirnament playing. No prettier sight can be found than a well kept lawn on which are the figures of the tennis players, the gentlemen in their comfortable flannels and the ladies looking natural and graceful in their pretty light dresses, while in the background may be a group of seniors and those who are resting from the labors of former games. The game, indeed, wears an air of domesticity which is altogether lacking in other sports, which makes it an attrac- tive game for both sexes; to the men because in it they can meet women on at least a plane of athletic equality during the pastime. In England it is the exception to find any man who is physically able to take part in sports, unable to play an ordinary game of lawn tennis. This would seem to infer that the game need not take up much time or the men would not have been able to have thus adopted it. This is the great strong point in favor of the game. Most men can find a half- hour for recreation, which is sufficient for a *'set," particularly if they can have the facilities handy. As a game for women who have even yet a smaller field from which to select their athletic LAWN TENNIS. 225 Sport than men, they may adopt this one without being accused of rompishness or being subjected to ill-natured criticism. A woman may at least feel sure that she is "looking well " while playing it, though she enters the game against man handi- capped with too much dress and too little strength. This latter remark refers mostly to American women. The English woman, who is physically superior on account of more exercise, can play lawn tennis better than the American woman, because she is stronger and more enduring. Women of all kinds, however, can play lawn tennis because it can be played violently or gently, entirely at her option. Though it is a game for ladies, it is not a '' ladies' game " in the sense that it is for weak and puny players only. If played too violently it becomes a serious strain on the muscles and produces as serious an effect upon the heart and lungs as any of the most exacting ath- letic sports. This opinion will be confirmed by anyone who has tried it, who is also a base-ball, foot-ball or lacrosse player. On this account ladies should play in tournaments with care. A man when playing is anxious to win and will exert himself greatly to that end, but a woman plays a lawn tennis tournament with the fixed idea that she must and shall win. To prevent a defeat, she often causes the game to become harmful excess rather than beneficial exercise. 15 226 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. The wrist fills an important place in the playing of the game. It often happens that women have more power in the wrist than the average man. The amount of this wrist power should be care- fully considered in selecting a racket of the right weight. There is also danger of women, who usually have weaker ankles than men, slipping on a smooth-turfed court and spraining ankle or knee. It has been found that the rubber sole will not always prevent slipping. The use of the small iron sole-pegs used by men is as advantageous to women, particularly as they are under the extra disadvantage of having skirts dangling about their feet, which often prevent a rapid movement to avert a disaster. These pegs may prevent serious accident and really do no more damage to the turf than an ordinary rubber sole. In the playing of this game by women the use of a suitably loose dress, giving plenty of room for the action of the heart and lungs is most impor- tant. This matter will be considered more at length in the chapter on ' ' Women in Athletics. ' ' A long skirt also seriously interferes with rapid movement from one part of the court to the other, which is often necessary for a good play, and it often interferes with the use of the racket in certain strokes. These disadvantages must be reduced to a minimum to thoroughly enjoy the game. One way to do this is for a woman to become as expert LAWN TENNIS. 227 at *' volleying" as at "rallying," which will thus give less chance for the skirt to interfere with or entangle the racket. The ' ' volley ' ' requires more strength in one effort but less in total amount than an exhausting ' ' rally. ' ' It has been said of lawn tennis with some truth, that it develops one side of the body more than the other, whichever side is played with most. Fash- ionable dressmakers have said that since the game became a craze, it has been found necessary always to measure both of the arms and shoulders of the most ardent lawn-tennis-playing customers. As much difference as from three to four inches has been found in the deltoid and biceps measurements of the two arms. Many lady tennis players have found that since taking up tennis it is impossible to put on the right hand the mate of the glove that snugly fits the left. This defect in the game could easily be remedied by care on the part of the player. He should practice not to become a right or left-hand player only. Ivawn tennis may and has been played in cities in winter in halls, which may be had for a mere trifle for such use in day time, they usually being occupied only in the evening. It has encroached at times upon armories and such public buildings. When played indoors it does somewhat, and can be made to approach the older game of tennis. Those 228 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. in search of novelties would do well to bear this in mind. It is not every one who can afford to build or even get the use of a regular tennis court. In connection with this use of armories and halls, it may be said that lawn tennis has been called the ' ' cuckoo ' ' of games on account of the way in which it thus seeks its nest, continually hanging onto or appropriating the home of some cricket, athletic or other club. A peculiarity of lawn tennis is the fact that it is self-contained, not co-operative. Each player must do the work for himself. It teaches team work, but not so much as foot-ball, nor even as croquet. Pos- sibly one reason why this latter game was so popular was due to the fact that a very " stick " of a player could have a partner who might be a good player, some devoted lover or "spoon," perhaps, who by his devotion might bring the poor player out triumphant at the end of a game, who then pro- nounced it a splendid game " and she just loved it." Though not very co-operative, lawn tennis is a "game" however, and a match game at that, all the time, with consequent continuous interest such as does not come with gymnasium work. Lawn tennis is as interesting, or more so, than the older sport, the ancient royal game of tennis, and that was once the rage to a far greater extent than lawn tennis has ever yet become. Henry V. , of England, was so fond of the older sport that the 230 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. Dauphin of France once sent him in sport a ton of tennis balls. As a survival of this popularity, Queen Victoria's household still retains a Master of the Tennis Court, which position is now mostly a sinecure. It would seem that the future of lawn tennis is certain. It is to be hoped that it has secured a permanent hold. It may, however, be one of those fashionable pursuits which will enjoy popularity for a time and then become only a remembrance. Croquet once had its thousands of players, and its decay came not so much from its inherent disad- vantages as from having gone out of fashion, though that was not sufficiently active to be called an athletic game. As a medium of exercise it was nil. Nor did it compare with lawn tennis as a means of amusement. But the more active lawn tennis, even as an athletic sport, has an athletic world to deal with which is fickle, particularly that portion of the athletic world composed of women, who observe and set fashion in other things. This world calls for novelty. If the ladies know when they are well off in having such a game, which men and women can enjoy alike, they will foster it all they can. LACROSSE. A game which may be earnestly recommended to the unattached athlete, though requiring more 232 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE, ground than is usually to be had in city limits, is the game of lacrosse. It is a very excellent game, and it is the one sport of American origin. It should therefore be adopted from purely patriotic motives, though we do not take to the poor Indian, its originator, for many of our social customs. In the Indian Baggataway [Fig. 25], the ancestor of ''lacrosse" (from the Canadian French word meaning bat, the instrument with which the game was played), from eight hundred to a thousand players would sometimes take part. In the early games it was necessary to score a hundred goals in one day. The preparations for the game sometimes took months to complete. In Fig. 26 may be seen the final preparations of the night previous, which included jumping, howling, dancing, and praying for victory. The medicine men, on the left, were the masters of ceremony and the referees and um- pires of the game. The squaws, who may be seen drawn up in long rival lines, are on the sides of their brothers, fathers, husbands, or sweethearts. They sang and encouraged their favorites in various ways. Bets were made and stakeholders appointed who, as may be seen, stood guard over the stakes, comprising horses, dogs, utensils, blankets, knives, and the like. The squaws were not allowed to play the game, which in noise, skill, and casualties resembled more a genuine battle; but for the amusement of their m mm m 234 ATHLETICS FOR PHYSICAL CULTURE. lords they were allowed to play a farcical kind of lacrosse [Fig. 27], using straight sticks without a net, and two balls fastened together with a short string. The Baggataway outline illustrations are A CHOCTAW PI.AYER, USING TWO I.ACROSSK STICKS SIMUI