ost of us do not feel the shackles; but the
stranger within our gates feels it at every step.

CHAPTER XX

SPORT AND GAMES

The word Sport has been taken into the German language lately, but
Germans use it when we should use "hobby." "It is my sport," says an
artist when he shows you furniture of his own design. He means that
his business in life is to paint pictures, but his pleasure is to
invent beautiful chairs and tables. When the talk turns on the absurd
extreme to which the Marthas of Germany carry their housekeeping zeal,
a German friend will turn to you in defence of his countrywomen. "It
is their 'sport,'" says he, and you understand his point of view. Yet
another will tell you that the English have only become sportsmen in
modern times, and that the Germans are rapidly catching them up; but
this is the kind of information you receive politely, disagree with
profoundly, and do not discuss because you have not all the facts at
your fingers' ends. But you know that the British love of sport, be it
vice or virtue, is as ingrained in Britons as their common sense, and
as old as their history.

In Germany the country gentleman is a sportsman. He rides, he shoots,
he hunts the wild boar which he preserves in his great forests. "You
have no country (_Land_)," said a German to me, using the word as
opposed to town. "In Germany we have country still." He meant that
England is thickly populated, and that we have no vast tracts of
heath and forest where wild animals live undisturbed. I told him there
were a few such places still in Scotland, but that they all belonged
to American and Jewish millionaires; however, he would not believe it.
He said he had spent a fortnight in England and had not heard of them.

It is not such a matter of course with Germans of a certain class to
ride as it is with us. You see a few men, women, and children on
horseback in Berlin, but not many; and in most German towns you see no
one riding except cavalry officers. I am told that the present Emperor
tried to institute a fashionable hour for riding in the Tiergarten,
but that it fell through partly because there were not enough people
to bring decent carriages and horses. On the great estates in East
Prussia the women as well as the men of the family ride, and go great
distances in this way to see their friends; but in cities you cannot
fail to observe the miserable quality and condition of the horses and
the scarcity of private