per classes of society. They
were congregated round a vast inclosure; they were elevated on
amphitheatrical wooden stands, and they were perched on the roofs of
horseless carriages, drawn up in rows. From this congregation there rose
such a roar of eager voices as he had never heard yet from any assembled
multitude in these islands. Predominating among the cries, he detected
one everlasting question. It began with, "Who backs--?" and it ended in
the alternate pronouncing of two British names unintelligible to foreign
ears. Seeing these extraordinary sights, and hearing these stirring
sounds, he applied to a policeman on duty; and said, in his best
producible English, "If you please, Sir, what is this?"

The policeman answered, "North against South--Sports."

The foreigner was informed, but not satisfied. He pointed all round the
assembly with a circular sweep of his hand; and said, "Why?"

The policeman declined to waste words on a man who could ask such a
question as that. He lifted a large purple forefinger, with a broad
white nail at the end of it, and pointed gravely to a printed Bill,
posted on the wall behind him. The drifting foreigner drifted to the
Bill.

After reading it carefully, from top to bottom, he consulted a polite
private individual near at hand, who proved to be far more communicative
than the policeman. The result on his mind, as a person not thoroughly
awakened to the enormous national importance of Athletic Sports, was
much as follows:

The color of North is pink. The color of South is yellow. North produces
fourteen pink men, and South produces thirteen yellow men. The meeting
of pink and yellow is a solemnity. The solemnity takes its rise in
an indomitable national passion for hardening the arms and legs, by
throwing hammers and cricket-balls with the first, and running and
jumping with the second. The object in view is to do this in public
rivalry. The ends arrived at are (physically) an excessive development
of the muscles, purchased at the expense of an excessive strain on the
heart and the lungs--(morally), glory; conferred at the moment by the
public applause; confirmed the next day by a report in the newspapers.
Any person who presumes to see any physical evil involved in these
exercises to the men who practice them, or any moral obstruction in
the exhibition itself to those civilizing influences on which the true
greatness of all nations depends, is a person without a biceps, who is