Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1859-07-30
THE SPHERE OF THE ATHLETE.

Casual observers have noticed the revival of
interest in athletic sports, and in trials of
strength and skill. 1t is not a new passion,
but the periodical flow of an old one, whose
manifestations have left their mark upon eve
ry generation since Adam started upon his
first travels The honest suspicion with which
they are sometimes regarded by very clever
grandmothers and elders of the kirk grows
naturally out of the fact that men with mis-
chievous tendencies make the worst possible
use of them, just as the golden grain and
sweet-smelling herbs and flowers are often dis
titled into swift and deadly poisons. But in
discriminate suspicion has always proved fruit
less, since there is not a man in the world,
however austere he may be, who has not his
own pastimes and varieties. And it'would be
well, in this blooming world, as Christopher
North says, if no prude had "sin that maist
easily beset him" worse than what Gibby
Watson's wife used to call his 'awfu' fondness
for the Crews"
Some choose games of skill and ingenuity;
others sports which require muscular vigor and
physical prowess Those who are indifferent
to them both are likely to be enslaved to van
tiles less commendabe than either. The pas
sion is universal. 1t is the office of the moral
list and the critic to tell how to make it the
most useful That is the best which, while it
encourages the spirit Of emulation and the
love of excellence, without which nothing great
is ever accomplished among men, gives firm
A. C al To 4l,,
arm, and a completeness of physical beauty
and health which are always threatened with
arrangement by the thoughtless incidence, or
the chronic excess peculiar to the American
temperament. 1t is also desirable that it
should be separated as far as possible from
vicious association, and made, as far as it has
any moral bearing at all, to pay tribute always
to purity and virtue. This is the purpose of
gymnastic exercises. For this end boating
and ball playing become an organized recrea-
ton; and Che long prescribed games of bowl
ing and billiards take their places as part of
complete systems of education.
Inthe character ofpublic recreations, somany
changes have been made that the diagnosis of
the old moralsts will not apply at all. 1t was
made when the possession of power was in
separable from brutal and vicious manifesto.
tions. The gadiatoral contests over the
graves of dead heroes are read of with horror
and pain. The old Saturnalia excite no faint
est wish for their restoration, The bear-bait-
ing, the prize-ighting, and the bloody amuse-
meuts of old amphitheatres, have gone to the
same shades with the inquisition. The little
fragments of barbarism which disturb the even
course of our young and promising cviliza-
ton are not more common than suicide and
murder, and scarcely as respectable. OF all
the ancient games, those which have any pub
lie attraction are sifted and winnowed from the
Olympic, enlarged and improved for modern
application. They were regarded in their
time, by many excellent philosophers, whose
fame is eternal, as the necessary parts
of a manly education, and the chief cause of
the vigor aad mental energy which marked
the character of the Hellenic race. Their
adoption for legitimate and commendable uses
will take away the profitable monopoly in them
for long time held by professional sportsmen
for mercenary and corrupting ends.
The occupation of jugglers, rope-walkers,
rat-catchers and prize fighters, is not SO ut
terly useless or brutal that it cannot yield
something to the stock of human experience
and power. Whatever there is in it of inge-
nuity, of agility, of fine physical development
or any thing separate from the cunning of the
swindler, or the ferocity of the beast, it is
common property in which every man ought
to have equal share. tits great irregularity
that the dyspeptics should have so much of the
responsibility there is in the world, and the
athletes nearly all the shame.
1t would not be so if the public had always
been as well disposed as it is now to the gen
eral cultivation of athletic sports The sue
cess of those who gamble in other mems weak
ness and credulity will decay, and the order of
nature will be restored, when honest men learn
that the discipline and strength of the athlete
is the rightful possession and ornament of
the highest manhood.