life, you already began to think of growing old and
to look backward. With you it was the forenoon, with us it is the
afternoon, which is the brighter half of life."

After this I remember that our talk branched into the subject of
popular sports and recreations at the present time as compared with
those of the nineteenth century.

"In one respect," said Dr. Leete, "there is a marked difference. The
professional sportsmen, which were such a curious feature of your day,
we have nothing answering to, nor are the prizes for which our athletes
contend money prizes, as with you. Our contests are always for glory
only. The generous rivalry existing between the various guilds, and the
loyalty of each worker to his own, afford a constant stimulation to all
sorts of games and matches by sea and land, in which the young men take
scarcely more interest than the honorary guildsmen who have served
their time. The guild yacht races off Marblehead take place next week,
and you will be able to judge for yourself of the popular enthusiasm
which such events nowadays call out as compared with your day. The
demand for 'panem ef circenses' preferred by the Roman populace is
recognized nowadays as a wholly reasonable one. If bread is the first
necessity of life, recreation is a close second, and the nation caters
for both. Americans of the nineteenth century were as unfortunate in
lacking an adequate provision for the one sort of need as for the
other. Even if the people of that period had enjoyed larger leisure,
they would, I fancy, have often been at a loss how to pass it
agreeably. We are never in that predicament."

Chapter 19

In the course of an early morning constitutional I visited Charlestown.
Among the changes, too numerous to attempt to indicate, which mark the
lapse of a century in that quarter, I particularly noted the total
disappearance of the old state prison.

"That went before my day, but I remember hearing about it," said Dr.
Leete, when I alluded to the fact at the breakfast table. "We have no
jails nowadays. All cases of atavism are treated in the hospitals."

"Of atavism!" I exclaimed, staring.

"Why, yes," replied Dr. Leete. "The idea of dealing punitively with
those unfortunates was given up at least fifty years ago, and I think
more."

"I don't quite understand you," I said. "Atavism in my day was a word
applied to the cases of persons in whom some trait of a remote ancestor
recurred in a noticeable man