The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1907-07-06
BY RUTHERFORD coRRIN.

By night Salt Lake moves by car line
and sidewalk upon the bicycle race
track by the Salt Palace. Salt Lake
young and pretty; Salt Lake, old and
Careworn; Salt Lake, sporting, and
Salt Lake, emotional. All Salt Lake.
For they are led by a person as old as
their race and follow a trail as old as
The first path through the paleOzOic
drift, as old as the right to live, as old
as the transgression, the desire to wit
ness the struggle visible for the su-
premacy Of the fittest. So might the
third man have pawned his second best
fig leaf to be behind a front row tree
when Cain and Abel opened UP with a
pair of clubs. The fight and the pur-
suit have been the only two variations
that man has offered up on the altar
Of his primal instincts through the
ages. The pursuit was observed and
adopted as very good way to settle
the matter of supremacy without blood
. shed, at the suggestion of the smaller
and swifter. Since then, as we have
brought our savagery into the parlOr
and refined ii into sport. we have the
race
The Arena Survives.
The form of the Arena has survived.
That at the Salt Palace is the oval \Of
ellipse of Athens and Rome The tiers
of faces bending toward the struggle
in it's centre have marked upon them
the strain of the contest as deeply as
those of two thousand years ago, before
He came who said there should be no
more struggle, and Whose word is our
law. The spirit of transportation has re-
fected from the tense contestants into
the interested spectator. Mentally the
observer is clutching the handle bar or
driving the pedals. Look at the
clinched hands on the rail- When a diff
ficult turn is made you will see the
crowd in the benches sway with the
rider. a silent ripple of movement and
then they settle back in their seats to
take the straightaway, Their blood is
in their cheeks and their eyes are bright
and hard. They are as DrimevaI for
the moment as the first of their fore
bears in the safe tree top watching the
First Pursuit. In the Arena we have
little time Cor the pursued. Last night
all cheered the scratch man.
Playing With Death.
The chariot evoluted into the sulky,
Then man found he could let out a few
seconds by putting the two wheels one
in front of the other and pedaling in
between. Then a murderer came along
who introduced a Bicycle to an automo-
bile, and the material for The Four
teenth Event was at hand. For three
wOuld-be suicides and a crowd who
would rather like to see them do it are
the component parts of this great
tribute to our ages of civilization and
the doctrine of love one another. Post
a bulletin tomorrow and announce that
Messrs. Lawson and Samuelson viii
promise to collide at the second turn
and see if you can find anybody left in
salt Lake The Fourteenth Event was
4 crowd of barbaTians hoping the lions
would chew the poor little humans into
a masticated pulp. This isn't any more
Of a race than that between the two
piston rods of an engine as far as hu-
man achievement is concerned. 1t is
a race with death. And death is the
pursuer- How far is Salt Palace from
the Coliseum, and did the vestals have
their thumbs down.
Ready for the Worst.
BY haif-paSt nine o'clock the crowd
had its fill of bicycling. the Sport and
was ready for motoring, the savagery.
Kramer. by wonderful burst OF speed,
had broken a worlds record. Strong
of limb and steady of head, he had out
fought and Outgeneralled his COMPETE
tors. Flashing here and there. now on
the black line and now by the rail. in