FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   >>  
and putting the fifty-six pound protest. Thus we lead the world at contesting Olympian games and winning them, and they lead the world at losing them first and then contesting them. In catch-as-catch-can wrestling between Suffragettes and policemen the English also hold the present championship at all weights. And so it goes. We in America have a range of sports and pastimes that is as wide as our continent, which is fairly wide as continents go. In using the editorial we here I do not mean, however, to include myself. At sport I am no more than an inoffensive onlooker. One time or another I have tried many of our national diversions and have found that those which are not strenuous enough are entirely too strenuous for a person of fairly settled habits. It is much easier to look on and less fatiguing to the system. I find that the best results along sporting lines are attained by taking a comfortable seat up in the grandstand, lighting a good cigar and leaning back and letting somebody else do the heavy work. Reading about it is also a very good way. Take fishing, now, for example. What can be more delightful on a bright, pleasant afternoon, when the wind is in exactly the right quarter, than to take up a standard work on fishing, written by some gifted traveling passenger agent, and with him to snatch the elusive finny tribe out of their native element, while the reel whirs deliriously and the hooked trophy leaps high in air, struggling against the feathered barb of the deceptive lure, and a waiter is handy if you press the button? I have forgotten the rest of the description; but any railroad line making a specialty of summer-resort business will be glad to send you the full details by mail, prepaid. In literature, fishing is indeed an exhilarating sport; but, so far as my experience goes, it does not pan out when you carry the idea farther. To begin with, there is the matter of tackle. Some people think collecting orchids is expensive--and I guess it is, the way the orchid market is at present; and some say matching up pearls costs money. They should try buying fishing tackle once. If J. Pierpont Morgan had gone in for fishing tackle instead of works of art he would have died in the hands of a receiver. Any self-respecting dealer in sporting goods would be ashamed to look his dependent family in the face afterward if he suffered you to escape from his lair equipped for even the simplest fishing expedition unle
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   >>  



Top keywords:

fishing

 

tackle

 

contesting

 

fairly

 

strenuous

 

sporting

 

present

 

details

 
deliriously
 

prepaid


experience

 

hooked

 

exhilarating

 
feathered
 

element

 
struggling
 
literature
 
resort
 

description

 
waiter

forgotten

 

specialty

 

summer

 

button

 

trophy

 

deceptive

 

railroad

 

making

 

business

 
market

receiver
 
dealer
 
respecting
 

Morgan

 

ashamed

 

equipped

 
simplest
 
expedition
 
escape
 

family


dependent
 

afterward

 

suffered

 

Pierpont

 

matter

 

people

 

orchids

 

collecting

 

farther

 

expensive