Page:Our Philadelphia (Pennell, 1914).djvu/516

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496
OUR PHILADELPHIA

tricts or the leisure for the gentlemanly pursuit of foxes and fishes, and their clubs were primitive compared to the palatial Country Clubs, whose luxury women now share with men. If you were in the hunting or fishing set, you heard all about it; but if you were not, you heard little enough. But you did not have to be in any set to keep up with the great Philadelphia game of cricket, which was popular, exclusive as the players in their team might be—all Philadelphia that did not play scrupulously going on the proper occasions to the Germantown Cricket Ground to watch all Philadelphia that did. The one alternative as popular was the pastime of rowing, the exclusiveness here in the rowing men's choice among the Clubs with the little boating clubhouses on the Schuylkill where boats could be stowed. And now? The cricket goes on, as gentlemanly and correct a pastime as ever. And the boating goes on, but with a delightful exclusive old Colonial house, for one Club at least, hidden in thickets of the Park where the stranger might pass within a stone's throw and never discover it, but where the boating party can dine with a privacy and a sumptuousness undreamed of at Belmont, where boating parties dined in my young days. And, in addition, time has been prodigal with golf and tennis and polo: women, who had begun tennis in my time, now beginning golf, games which, I might as well admit, I have no use for and can therefore say little about. And I am told that the University foot-ball matches are among the most