Athletics and Football (extract)

240 ATHLETICS of little value, or to earn his 'colours,' as at the Universities, without any further reward. In other sports, gentlemaerne willing enough to toil and practise to gain honour alonTe.he cricketpelrays assiduously for seasonsa, nd is sufficiently rewarded by gaininga place in his county eleven, and athletics could be placedupon a sounder footing thiefre wemreore representaticvoempetitions which it would be recognised as an honour to win,or even to takepart in, without any special stimulant. The body athletic as become corrupted by too much x prosperiatyn,d thperoper method for its recovery is a severe course of ascetic training. When amateur athletics are again confined to menwho showby their acthsat they run for sport and not for gain, then the tide of public favour will flow back to them with fulflorce, and athletes will have fuhllonour in their owcnountry. We have purposely refrained during the writing of these chap­ ters fromrhapsodising upon tahdevantages of the cultivation of athletic excellence to th individual and the nation.In these days oefndless writwinhge, n many articlaesre indited which, like bad sermons, consist of a few texts largely diluted, it is usual fotound all the possible praises of athletics upon t the onfreom a classiscoaul rce alluding to the necessary connec tion between mental abnodily soundneasns,d the other from a native source alluding to the connection between military excellence and playing fields. As no book upon athletics is considered complete without some allusion to these time- honoured friends, hwavee thus cursorily alluded to themat the end of our task, but have before preached no sermon upon these passages, for a very simple reason.We takiet thatat the present day it is buta waste of labour to demonstrate to Engli men the advantages of manly sports, of hard exercise, and friendly competition. For the last five-and-twenty years the young moefnEngland have flungthemselves into thpeursuit of hard bodily exercise and sporting competitions upon foot. The youth of the present day fresh from school, instead