The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-10-25
SPIRIT or THH PRESS.
Editorial Opinions ofthe Leading Journals
upon Current Topies-compiIed Every
Day for the Evening Telegraph
THE SORROWS OF PHILADELPHIA.

THE SORROWS OF PHILADELPHIA.
From the NJ Y. World.
1t is but a few days since it was our plea
SAINT duty to congratulate Chicago upon her
triumph, as it is now our painful duty to
condole with Philadelphia upon her defeat,
in the matter of athletic sports. Neither
Chicago nor Philadelphia is a city from
which one would anticipate great achieve
ments in this direction. A community which
only relaxes its employment of making or
losing money to bolt indigestible viands is
not a community of Homeric heroes But
neither is a community which employs its
brief intervals of wakefulness in pacing, with
measured step and slow, between rows of
sarcophagi in the similitude of human dwell
ings and whose widest diversion is to crowd
its Academy miscalled of Music to hear the
bodings of Anna Dickinson, as it's stated dis
sipation is to read the riddle of Occasional.
No rational Phidias would betake himself to
either town in search of model for a winner
of the Olympian games
Nevertheless there is q certain fitness in
the proposition that, if the scions of the first
families of Philadelphia were to addict them
selves to any physical pastime, it should be
to the game of cricket. Jean lngelow tells
us that there are certain
"Sounds which more than silence bring;-
Itself and its delightsomeness.'
Upon the same principle we may say that
if there were exercises lazier than rest, and
pleasures bitter with bitterness beyond the
reach of grief, Philadelphia would ''think on
these things" As the ''lilies and languors of
virtue decried by Mr.. Swinburne are to the
'traptures and roses of vice. celebrated by
that bard, so is the gentle and respectable
dulness of Philadelphian relaxation to the
fevered and disorderly hilarity of Chicago.
Far be it from us to malign the ancient and
honorable game, rather than the religious
rite, of cricket. But it is notable that not
only is Philadelphia the only American capt.
tai of which the athletic citizens have not
been impatient of its languor and its length,
but that it has been the fondest boast of
Philadelphia that her indigenous cricketers
were overmatched for the imported cricketers
of New York. By SO much was the stoldity
of Britain supposed to be surpassed by the
phlegm of Philadelphia.
But now the sole athletic glory of Phila-
delphia has departed and her elected eleven
have defled before her saddened eyes under
the British yoke. The fact that Britons resi-
dent for the most part in New York have
brought this shameful thing to pass has natu-
rally added bitterness to the cup of her defeat
But we have not the slightest disposition to
exult over that fact, and we may recommend
even to fallen Philadelphia not to mourn as
those having no hope. So much more ardent
is the national patriotism than the municipal
pride of New York that it will be matter of
general rejoicing within her gates that, in the
pastimes in which the old French chronicler
related the English to take their pleasures
sadly, the sadness of veteran Englshman is
proved to be more profoundly gloomy than
the sadness of a "Young American" even
though that young American be partakel
of the drowsy and dreary sadness of Phila-
delphia.