ut, if this custom prevailed, it would not
seem to me stranger than the custom of training and paying pugnacious
people to hit one another on the face and breast, with the greatest
possible skill and violence, for the delectation of highly critical
audiences. I do not say that a glove-fight is in itself a visually
disgusting exhibition. I saw no blood spilt, the other night, and no
bruises expressed, by either the 'light-weights' or the
'heavy-weights.' I dare say, too, that the fighters enjoy their
profession, on the whole. But I contend that it is a very lamentable
profession, in that it depends on the calculated prostitution of good
natural energies. A declaration of love prefaced by a grimace, such as
I saw in my dream, seems to me not one whit more monstrous than a
violent onslaught prefaced by a hand-shake. If two men are angry with
each other, let them fight it out (provided I be not one of them) in
the good old English fashion, by all means. But prize-fighting is to be
deplored as an offence against the soul of man. And this offence is
committed, not by the fighters themselves, but by us soft and sedentary
gentlemen who set them on to fight. Looking back at ancient Rome, no
one blames the poor gladiators in the arena. Every one reserves his
pious horror for the citizens in the amphitheatre. Yet how are we
superior to them? Are we not even as they--suspended at exactly their
point between barbarism and civilisation. In course of time, doubtless,
'the ring'will die out. For either we shall become so civilised that we
shall not rejoice in the sight of painful violence, or we shall relapse
into barbarism and go into the mauling business on our own account. Our
present stage--the stage of our transition--is not pretty, I think.

A MORRIS FOR MAY-DAY

Not long ago a prospectus was issued by some more or less aesthetic
ladies and gentlemen who, deeming modern life not so cheerful as it
should be, had laid their cheerless heads together and decided that
they would meet once every month and dance old-fashioned dances in a
hall hired for the purpose. Thus would they achieve a renascence--I am
sure they called it a renascence--of 'Merrie England.' I know not
whether subscriptions came pouring in. I know not even whether the
society ever met. If it ever did meet, I conceive that its meetings
must have been singularly dismal. If you are depressed by modern life,
you are unlikely to find an anodyne in the self-appointed