Men of Muscle, and the Highland Games of Scotland, etc.

J. S. E\VEN, OF METHLICK, ABERDEENSHIRE. M ANY readers of Shakespeare will remember Ophelia':-. lament over Hamlet's los. of reason when she begins- "\Vhal a noble mind i here o'erthrown," etc. John S. Ewen, the comely athlete under notice, has many of the talents which the fair Ophelia attributed to Hamlet, without hi madness. John should have been an amateur, and a gentleman amateur to boot, but being brought up, as he himself says, almost under the shadow of Haddo House, it became his early ambition to figure in th1.; lists in the Monument Park on the great gala day. Her , as boy and man, E,ven has competed since he wa eleven years of age, with the exception of his thirteenth and four· teenth year , so that as he is now entering his twenty-eighth year, he has been an athlete for seventeen year·. Runnirg, leaping and wrestling were the items most attractive during his early school curriculum, and when he developed from the boy to the man, the hammer, stone and caber followed as a matter of cour~e Owen Duffy adYised Ewen to go in for putting, M'Rae was of the opinion that he would make a great hammer thrower, many of his friends maintained he ought to have been a runner and leaper, but Ewen himself tells us h~ preferred to practi e them all, although he now fears h cannot claim a distinct pre-eminence at any particular branch, unle · it i · in weight throwing with the usual 7ft. 103