have chosen to commit their “peculiar institution” to the chances of civil war; and it is already evident that nothing short of a conquest of the Free States by the South could save the institution. The day will come when the men and women of the South will appreciate what the Federal Government is doing now, in rendering safe that abolition of slavery which is the haunting terror of their lives.
“BELL’S LIFE,” AND OUR SPORTS AND PASTIMES.
It is marvellous how little we know of each other in this England of ours in the year of grace, 1861. In common with most middle-aged quiet gentlemen, who have done a little poetry in their time, and have lamented in passable verse the merry days of old, I have lived in the belief that we were fallen upon evil days, when “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” Our working population have the character, throughout Europe, of being a dull heavy people, in whose highlows the elastic spirit of sport no longer treads. Well, firmly fixed in this opinion, and no more doubting it than I did that Robin Hood of old killed a Sheriff of Nottingham every other month by way of pastime, I was suddenly brought one morning into the companionship of a deal table, two official-looking chairs, and a “Bell’s Life,” in an out-of-the-way station of the Eastern Counties Railway. Now, I had often seen this paper before, but as “the fancy” lay out of my beat, I might be said to have seen it and not seen it, and it is wonderful how much of this kind of double-sight we manage to get through in the course of a day. But how could one help seeing a paper of any kind, with nothing to look at for two mortal hours but a highly coloured picture of a gigantic mangold wurzel, meant as an advertisement to astonish the agricultural mind? At all events, I sat me down to have a spell at “Bell’s Life.” When a man suddenly lifts up a fiat stone, it is wonderful the amount of active life, before hidden to his sight, he sees skirmishing about in all directions. Just such a picture of active life opened to my benighted vision, on turning over the pages of this newspaper. Why, what has become of the dull boy, Jack? Is this the individual, I asked myself, whom I find running, racing, diving, swimming, boating, yachting, leaping, fighting, sparring, wrestling, shooting, ratting, dog-fighting, knurring and spelling, cricketing, quoiting, racketing, &c., &c.? Why, what has come to the dull boy? To read the papers he would seem suddenly to have gone crazed. But, no; the station-master draws my attention to the fact, that this paper has been going on for nearly a third of a century, and all the while its pages have presented to its readers the same astounding reflection of the vigour, agility, and desperate energy of the sporting world of England. There is spring and go in old England yet, is the mental reflection which every man must make as he reads and wonders. Even the Londoner cannot be so degenerate an animal when we read what he does. Why, he takes the shine out of the lithe Indian, even on his own ground. In this very page I read that a Cockney was lately pitted against two celebrated North American Indians in a ten miles run at New York, and beat them all to nothing. And what surprises me most is, that the clean running of the Londoner was contrasted by the lookers-on with the lollopping, awkward gait of the sons of the forest. St. Giles showing its heels to the fleet savages of Delaware! What next!
But when one analyses the contents of these pages, the curious aspects of sport that exist among us comes out still more strongly. As I have touched upon the question of running, let me examine the column appropriated to matches to come off. In a recent week’s (July 7th) paper under this head there are no less than sixty-nine pedestrian matches to be contested, and these under every conceivable condition of length, &c., from a hundred and fifty yards to four miles, and some with the addition of having to jump a thousand hurdles! For every one of these races the men have to go into training, to sweat down superfluous fat by walking daily long distances in half a dozen top-coats, under the severe and somewhat monotonous nourishment of mutton chops only—why, martyrdom was often won by the saints of old at less physical suffering than these men undergo—for a paltry 10l. stake. To read the accounts of these matches, the reader would think that it was some description of a menagerie he was perusing. “The American Deer looked up to his work “the Barnsley Antelope seemed in excellent condition or “the London Stag had not an ounce of superfluous flesh.” So earnest are all concerned in the physical qualifications of the competitors, that the man is completely sunk in the contemplation of his animal functions.
Under the heading of “The Ring” the engagements and the events to come off are so numerous, that one naturally asks where are the police? How is it that thousands of persons can congregate in the open fields, week by week, for an unlawful purpose, without any of these gentry knowing anything about it; or if they do, to find they are actually defied. In the great fight between Sayers and Heenan they were kept out of the ring simply by the spectators closing up, and preventing their getting through. The explanation is, that it is impossible to legislate against any large class of people without their consent. The Ring is still an institution of the country, declining no doubt, but it cannot be said to be defunct so long as eighty members of the lower house can be found, as in the great international fight, to patronise it. The P.R. understands that it has its duties as well as its rights; there are members of the P.R.B. Society, an institution to afford relief to decayed bruisers and their families, and there are many societies, with much higher sounding titles, whose members subscribe according to their means with much less liberality.
We all know that the P.R. possesses a phraseology particularly its own, but a little study of “Bell’s Life” gives us an insight into the social habits of this unique community. Shakspere says that he who dislikes the harmony of sweet sounds is only fit for stratagem and strife, but my “Bell” tells us a very different story.