# Athletics and Manly Sport

First published in 1888 as Ethics of Boxing and Manly Sport. The essay "Canoeing in the Dismal Swamp" did not appear in the earlier edition.
ATHLETICS
AND
MANLY SPORT
BY
John Boyle O'Reilly
"It is exercise alone that supports the spirits and keeps the mind in vigor."—Cicero.
"A man must often exercise or fast or take physic, or be sick."—Sir W. Temple.
"Anything is better than the white-blooded deterioration to which we all tend."—O. W. Holmes.
"There is no better preventive of nervous exhaustion than regular, unhurried, muscular exercise. If we could moderate our hurry, lessen our worry, and increase our open-air exercise, a large portion of nervous diseases would be abolished."—James Muir Howie.
Illustrated
BOSTON
PILOT PUBLISHING COMPANY
597 Washington Street
1890.
Copyrighted By JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY 1890.
ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED BY
CASHMAN, KEATING & COMPANY,
Boston, Mass.
DEDICATED
TO THOSE WHO BELIEVE THAT A LOVE FOR
INNOCENT SPORT, PLAYFUL EXERCISE,
AND ENJOYMENT OF NATURE,
IS A BLESSING INTENDED NOT ONLY FOR
THE YEARS OF BOYHOOD, BUT FOR
THE WHOLE LIFE OF A MAN.
CONTENTS
ETHICS AND EVOLUTION OF BOXING.
Appendix.
THE TRAINING OF ATHLETES TESTED BY EVERY-DAY LIFE.
ANCIENT IRISH ATHLETIC GAMES, EXERCISES, AND WEAPONS.
CANOEING SKETCHES.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
FULL PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS.
ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT.
ETHICS AND EVOLUTION OF BOXING.
ANCIENT IRISH WEAPONS.
CORRECTIONS.
Page 25, fourth line—read "were" instead of "was."
Page 71, fifth line—read "defeated" instead of "captured."
Page 116—read "Breakfast at 8 a. m.," instead of "8 p. m."
Page 166, eighth line—omit the words "all-round."
INTRODUCTION.
This book is not intended as a mere manual for the special use of skilled professional or amateur athletes, though necessarily many of its details refer particularly to these classes. Its main purpose is to bring into consideration the high value, moral and intellectual as well as physical, of those exercises that develop healthy constitutions, cheerful minds, manly self-confidence, and appreciation of the beauties of nature and natural enjoyment. Nevertheless, these lines of Bunyan tell my preliminary experience: —
"Some said, John, print it; others said, Not so;
Some said, It might do good; others said, No."
So long as large numbers of our young people, of both sexes, are narrow-chested, thin-limbed, their muscles growing soft as their fat grows hard, timid in the face of danger, and ignorant of the great and varied exercises that are as needful to the strong body as letters to the informed mind, such books as this need no excuse for their publication.
Many will say: "the time for this sort of thing is ​past; the world has grown too intelligent for these idle games and exercises; we, who know what life is, know that athletic sports are only symptoms of questionable tastes."
The pride of knowledge is bad, but the pride of ignorance is worse; together, they are almost hopeless. The truth is, there is more need to-day for physical development, for play, for sport, for athletic exercises and amusements of all kinds, than there was during the Greek Olympiads, or at any other period of human history. Strange, that this obvious truth should call for public statement. "On old and young," says a great modern philosopher, "the pressure of modern life puts a still increasing strain. In all businesses and professions, intense competition taxes the energies and abilities of every adult; and, with a view of better fitting the young to hold their place under this intenser competition, they are subject to a more severe discipline than ever before."
"We have not holidays enough," says an eminent American physician. "Five days a year is our allowance, a scanty one indeed, that seems ridiculous to our quieter neighbors across the water, who, needing rest less than we, get four times as much. But there is no time for relaxation; we must only do our best to brace up and stand the drive."
​What parent, who has observed the endless studies of his children, at school during the day, and at home in the evening, with little time and opportunity for vigorous play, and has not inwardly feared that it was too much for the boy or girl? His fears are real warnings: they are true. The studies are too much, unless offset by a proportionate amount of play and vigorous exercise. They prevent the children from developing; and they also prevent them from learning.
It is a physiological law, pointed out by Lewes in his "Dwarfs and Giants," that there is an antagonism between growth and development—by growth meaning increase of size, by development increase of structure.
The question is not only a question of bulk, but also a question of quality. A soft, flabby flesh makes as good a show as a firm one; but though to the careless eye, a youth of full flaccid tissue may appear the equal of one whose fibres are well-toned, a trial of strength will prove the difference. Obesity in adults is often a sign of feebleness.
There is a corresponding radical difference between true education and the memorizing of facts. The meaning of the word tells its own story—e—ducation—the drawing-out of what is in the child, not the ​cramming undigested facts into the helpless young memory. The cruelty of it! Were food forced into the body as facts are into the mind, so as to produce violent dyspepsia, parents would be compelled to stop. But they will not see the consequent mental dyspepsia and its vile train of intellectual, moral, and physical abnormalties. Improper education stores up useless knowledge as unhealthy living stores up stolid fat, instead of turning it into vigorous muscle.
"By accelerating the circulation of the blood," says a scientific authority, "it facilitates the performance of every function; and so tends alike to increase health when it exists and to restore it when it has been lost." For this changeless reason, the same to-day as a thousand years ago or a thousand years hence, play is a necessity of human nature; and for this reason also play is superior to any regulated form of uninteresting gymnastic exercise. Play is the gymnastics of nature; and that artificial exercise is best which comes nearest to it in interest and amusement. "An agreeable mental excitement has a highly invigorating influence."
Play also makes an equable distribution of action to all parts of the body; the action of gymnastics, falling on special parts, produces fatigue, and if constantly repeated, leads to disproportionate development.
​"Consider the fact," says Herbert Spencer, "from any but the conventional point of view, and it will seem strange that while the raising of first-rate bullocks is an occupation on which men of education willingly bestow much time, inquiry, and thought, the bringing up of fine human beings is an occupation tacitly voted unworthy of their attention. Mammas who have been taught little but languages, music, and accomplishments, aided by nurses full of antiquated prejudices, are held competent regulators of the food, clothing, and exercise of children. Meanwhile the fathers read books and periodicals, attend agricultural meetings, try experiments, and engage in discussions, all with the view of discovering how to fatten prize pigs! Infinite pains will be taken to produce a racer that shall win the Derby: none to produce a modern athlete. Had Gulliver narrated of the Laputans that men vied with each other in learning how best to rear the offspring of other creatures, and were careless of learning how best to rear their own offspring, he would have paralleled any of the other absurdities he ascribes to them."
There is character as well as strength in muscle; and little of either in flabbiness or lard. Take the colloped fat from the under-chin and jowl of a young man, and ​put it on his arms, trunk, and legs in the shape of firm muscle, and, other things being equal, you improve his moral as well as his bodily health.
All who are trained in athletics know the value of the "second wind." Powerful athletes are in danger till this is reached; but he who has obtained his "second wind" in a contest can go on as long as his muscular power lasts. It is worth remembering that there is a moral as well as a physical "second wind;" and that many who go down at the first trials would have held on to a virtuous and happy end had the failing character been sustained at the period of early weakness.
Fatness and softness are merely sensuous expressions, or symptoms of disease. They are non-conductors of spiritual messages, stopping or deadening the finer currents of enjoyment, as an insulator stops electricity.
The motive-centre of a thinker is the brain; of a philanthropist, the heart; of a sensualist the belly. In the latter class, a kindly or beautiful or devotional aspiration enters the mind and wanders aimlessly through the flabby muscles, straying off the nerve at will, for the tissues have not sufficient consistency to hold it on the line, until it sinks gradually but surely toward the marshy and forbidden wastes of ​appetite, and is drowned, like a belated traveller, in the weedy morasses of the gastric-centre.
To place manly sport in its proper relation to the people, we must save athletics from the professional athletes, and from the evil association of betting and gambling, that stunts, encumbers and disgraces almost all kinds of open-air exercise.
The very fact that professionals and gamblers fasten on a sport, is the highest proof of its value to the people: your worm never selects an inferior apple. The popular desire is the very stock in trade of the professional gambler. There is only one way in which this reform can be thoroughly made, namely, by the recognition of athletic training as a necessary and admirable part of general education. This will remove at once the flavor of disrepute which at present attends a taste for manly sport.
All healthy young people are fond of physical exercise; and proper instruction is as necessary here as in the intellectual departments of school and college, and will as surely result in benefit to the individual and the state.
I desire to express my thanks to several persons who have assisted me in the preparation of this book, ​especially to Dr. Francis A. Harris, of Boston, for his invaluable paper on the physiology of athletic training; to the Boston Herald, for its enterprising publication of the article on boxing, the plates of which The Herald generously presented to me; to my friend, John Donoghue, the sculptor, for permission to engrave his great statute of "The Boxer;" and to the Editor of Outing, for the use of several illustrations from that interesting magazine.
John Boyle O'Reilly.
* Ethics and Evolution of Boxing
* The Training of Athletes Tested by Every-Day Life
* Ancient Irish Athletic Games, Exercises, and Weapons
* Canoeing Sketches
** Canoeing on the Connecticut
** Down the Susquehanna in a Canoe
** Down the Delaware River in a Canoe
** Canoeing in the Dismal Swamp
* Index