An Autobiography of an Ancient Athlete & Antiquarian

AUTOBIOGRAPHY said that but for the contempt he felt for members of the Sporting League, he would challenge to box, row, run, and jump anyone of them. These remarks were promptly taken up by Mr. W. Allison, the Hon. Secretary of the League, in a letter I have before me as I write, in which he was asked to sink his contempt, and meet a retired army officer over 45 years of age, height 5ft. gins., who had been badly shot through the body at Tel-el-Kebir. The officer was I believe Sir Claude de Crespigny, who woulrl, had they met, have thrashed him soundly, but up to the time of writing Mr.John Burns has not waived his contempt (!) though he has shown his pacific opinions by opposing England's taking part in the present War, though I have not heard that he has declined from keeping an office or refusing to accept his salary. The:e was therefore little left for me to do except to throw my unwanted energy into collecting the annual fund for the Unemployed. In this I think I may say I was successful, for I nearly doubled the best hitherto raised, and definitely deposed the late Dean Lefroy from the post he had so long held of being the most successful cadger in the city. The Prehistoric Society, promoted by W. G. Clarke, H. H. Hall, and others, had its first meeting on the 26th October. On the 2nd November I went with the City Engineer to Yarmouth to inspect the butts there, it being my idea to mark my Mayoralty by re-opening the Mousehold Range, and next day went to London to try to get an interview with Haldane and Burns. On the 4th I lectured on "Names and Nicknames '' before the Science Gossip Club, and went up again the next day to London to see John Burns, who threw cold water on the idea, and especially as to my sugges– tion that the re-opening would find real work for the Unemployed. Nor was I more lucky in trying to get an alternative scheme through with the War Office, whose counter-suggestion to have a range cross– ing the Wensum at right angles, which would have held up the river traffic for hours at a time, was absolutely fatuous. The Mousehold scheme. which was to fire away from the barracks, was feasible, lif, as the City