Year: 1875

America.


While we are not an athletic people, and
the average Englishman will outrun the
average American or outrow or ride or swim
him, or while the German will outfence him,
it is yet gratifying to note that we have
lately been going in the right direction.
Such buildings as the costly and elaborate
Racket Club house now erecting in this city,
and the large attendance on our baseball
matches, rowing and yacht races our wrest-
ling-bouts and foot-contests, eyince the in
creased interest in athletics, which, if rightly
handled, may yet make us physically the
peers of any people on the globe Already
not only in the Ito us) newer pastimes, like
polo and racket curling Gr@co-Roman
wrestling and foI-hunting, but in the older
such as cricket, skating and swimming, walk
ing, rowing and yachting, running jumping
foot ball, base ball, sparring rifle shooting
and velocipede riding-everything in short
which exhilarates and toughens the man, and
enables him to test his fellow-there have
been great strides forward, and to-day ten
men can talk intelligently of their bodies and
what brings them power and skill and stay,
and comeliness too, where one could before
the war. In rowing, alone, the facts are sim
ply astonishing In 1868 the whole num-
ber of boat clubs in the United States was
fifty-three and in the British provinces three.
On the 30th of November, 1870, these numbers
had increased to two hundred and forty
seven, and when we consider the great i'm
petus given to this sport by the visit of our
students to England, and Of the Renforth
and Taylor -Winship crews, and Eng
lands fastest scullers to this country
since then, the sudden enlarging of the
annual University race from match Of two
crews to the grandest race in the world, with
fourteen six-oars abreast, and Of the National
Amateur contest at an equally surprising
rate, it is quite safe to say that there are
now over five hundred rowing organizations
in the United States alone. Keep up q SINH
lar increase for the next ten years and we
shall actually begin to hold our own with the
English in general interest in this pastime,
and make true the prediction that ''the time is
not far distant when wherever in this broad
country there is harbor, river, lake or
stream fit to float O boat, there rowing will
become, what it we'll deserves to be,
one Of the most attractive as well
as the principal of athletic sports.
Athletic clubs, too, are springing up in al
most every State, and it would be better if
we could say every county. At the students
athletic meeting at Springfield, in 1873 there
were three entries at Saratoga, last July,
one hundred and eleven, and the time made
in some Of the contests was highly creditable
and pleasantly near that of the best English
amateurs.


The effect fthis physical awakening cannot
fail to be wholesome and beneficial 1t is just
what we want. More bone and sinew leg and
lung power in our indoor men; better fitness
to stand the hours and years they must pass
in close and badly lighted rooms, heated by
steam and furnaces stronger digestion and
heartier good cheer and the manly indepen-
dence that comes with them-and whether
times arc dull or bright the nation is richer
and healthier and happier Men will
come to be proud of their vigor and, de-
lighted with the way it braces them for un-
WoHteu enoll, Will HuSoanu ~ JeaIousIy anu
be slow to yield to anything which will
lessen or dissipate it, or cut them off from
ripe old age The older men are shrewdly
seizing on the coming notable year in our
history to compare their handiwork with
that of oil the nations of the world. Let the
younger ones be awake also to their chance,
and, generously inviting to our shores the
best men physically whom the world can
furnish. either beat them at their own work,
or carefully discern just what it is that beats
them, make q note of it, and never let the
like occur again