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THE MARKET PORTERS’ RACE: STILTS v. LOADED.
cock who was much too speedy for his sisters. No competition can continue to exist when victory is always a certainty for the same competitor, and thus it was Sir John Astley’s great chicken race came to an end.
The working classes in Yorkshire and Lancashire are so keen on odd contests of all sorts that the whole of this article could easily be filled with a description of even a few of them, but one or two of these games certainly deserve mention here. At Wakefield quite recently two colliers engaged in the peculiar diversion of trying which could balance a cork the longest on the end of his nose. The prize was an unlimited quantity of fluid, which after the match was shared equally between victor and vanquished. Rigid teetotallers may incline to the opinion that such matches are merely an excuse for alcoholic indulgence, but, as a matter of fact, they are simply ebullitions of the intensely sporting nature of the average Yorkshireman, and the competition would be just as keen if the prize were a bottle of the most harmless lemonade. Indeed, in a contest which came off at Morley last year both competitors were total abstainers. On this occasion a bricklayer was matched to run a distance of half a mile, pushing in front of him a wheel-barrow full of bricks, against a one-legged railway porter. Over a smooth course the bricklayer would probably have won, but the rough ground where the race took place was all against him, and his opponent who hopped with the agility of a kangaroo won by several wheelbarrow lengths.
Talking of one-legged athletes, a very cele-
