The Weekly Journal. — 1904-10-14 (Hartlepool, Cleveland, England)

THE MARRIAGE LOTTERY.  Athletics Don't Always Pay.  Genevieve Jones was a physical culture girl. No on. could deny that sbe was a stunning ez• ample of the benefita of properly regulated eso /acme and rational living. Her physique was of the kind which is commonly denominated by physical culture expert• as superb. Her face was a vision of beauty and superabundant health; her form such au embodiment of grace and strength as would have made Idies piano, who it Is said once . _  held records for that sort of thing as green with envy as a persimmon in June. When she toot her daily constitutional she moved aloeg the street with such queenly grace, perfect posse and correct carriage as to attract great attention—in so much that strained necks became so common among the male population of her part of town that the druggist had to lay ia an extra stock of Uzi. meats. Her appearance on a bicycle was the sensor tion on the boulevard. When she went on the golf links there was not a caddie on the gronn who could Sad a lost ball if it ware yiag at his very feet, nor a player who could do anything hut make a :wide at least every other shot. At the beach she was such an iridescent pebble as made the mermaids tear their hair In dismay. But when she went to the gym I Why, she could chin herself on the horizontal bar twenty times in succeesioa, aniiii basketball in a way that made the privileged 1 spectators gasp with astonishment and caused heskoister Mary to clasp her nnathletic hands ioly horror. Yee, Genevieve had a sister, but she did uot count. When people spoke of " the Joao. err It was Genevieve they always meant. It was true Mary could do a little plain :=land could make a pie that oesiM be without a hatchet, as had been mosseery with the only one Genevieve had ever ate tempted; she could play croquet a little, but when it came to golf she didn't know a brassie from a putting green. Bad to have talked to ' her of the •ossibllity of a lis being either geed er had would have been to run the danger of Involving one's self in a theological discussices.l She blew no about basketball than a Kentucky = ws about the solar parallax,' * nor could As any more that able yam., server with a sited States =specter's sten" on it. If ehe really had any pretensions to even a passable prettiness, they wm so doubtful as to have palmed unobserved beneath the lustrous 'Enigmas of her *Weds sister's pulchritude. 4 Such being the circumstances of the cam, it was not to be wondered at that Genevieve was distinctly It In the matrimonial scramble, while Mary occupied the anomalous paddies of the gold plank is the Democrat= platform—ohs wenn in it. i Scarcely could a youth be fauna within a radius of many miles but was ready to lay his manly heart and hopes at Gmeevieve's shapely, feet. While Mary was peeling potatoes or baking cakes in the kitchen. Genevieve would' be up in the parlour discusdng drives asit niblkir dads with Jack Clerk, the amateur golli champion, or apsoolatiag with Bob Touchdawn of Princeton on the outcome of the next big football game. When the Jones family went I to the seashore. Mary might be sees kelpie/ I the children to look for shells, while deasviev• was out beyond the life-lines, being taught the trudgeon stroke by Charlie Webfoot of the We- : saving corps. She turned down her ardent admirers by the'l score. It needed a pretty goodiniaa to get eves to the turning-down point with Genevieve. . as 14 : her standard was high, and time went on s kept raising the matrimonial ante, so to . : 14.4 A. her athletic prowess increased, so standard of masculine fitness. After e ' the championship of the May-Dint Golf Clu and made a record for the running broad jump, ' no man could expect to have his attentions ftceived unless he heldt at least one amateur world's record and could show pawn tickets fos at least fifty medals. Nor did she stop there but soon began to require in her would-be 'miters a degree of masculine strength and physical symmetry commensurate with her own feminine perfectien. After many had been weighed in the balanoe of Miss Jones's exacting athleticism and found wanting she finally decided to bestow her heart and hand upon one who seemed to her to meet all the reqiiireenents of her high ideal —a young athlete who had gone through two colleges without the formality of using either his brains or money and who held more records than he was able to keep track of. His stook in trade with which to dart the game of life on the double-barrelled principle wee only A highly exaggerated idea of his own greatness and a bushel or two of assorted medals— but Genevieve was quite happy until one day he left for other parts with a chorus girl. In the meantime -Mary had somehow succeeded in hooking what passed for a young man, and she lost little time in jellifying him along to the marrying point and getting the matter cinched. He was not much to look at, but he could bring in enough aimoleons to foot the bills; and as for Mary, if a man's ideals are not too high, he can forgive a woman mud; of the'good looks she hasn't got if she can fry steak right and bake edible Vomits. Mary has eight children now, and her husband somehow manages to support them and save a little money besides. Geneviev lost heart in the game after the incident of the chorus girl. She is now running a physical culture page in a women's magazine and giviny lectures spitace suicide. I From all of w it will be semi that matrie mon, is still. a i'° a 4 sad bismat lot,tnriv