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

JAMES PATON, OF MURTHLY. R EADERS of Dickens' works will remember l\Ir. Turvy– drop in "Bleak House," who daily instructed the nobility and gentry in the art of dancing and deportment. The widest stretch of fancy could scarcely conceive two men so un– like each other in every respect as l\Ir. Turvydrop and James J>aton, yet after Paton retired from competing at games he earned his living by teaching dancing and sword-fencing or singlestick. The latter, by the way, is seldom seen at games now, but in Paton's time almost every gathering had sword "Ombats on the programme. This exercise is doubt– less a relic of bygone ages, when the youth of the Highlands practised with sticks and sometimes with blunted swords and targets, waging miniature warfare against each other, keeping the hand and eye in training for the time when the single– stick and blunted sword would give place to the keen-edged claymore and dirk. At the game of singlestick, as at reels, Paton was the undisputed champion when in his prime; while at hammer– throwing, putting, and tossing the caber he was one of the best. Like Inverness, Perthshire is famous for the number of great athletes who have been born and brought up there. M'Dermott, Peter Haggart, William Stewart, l\,f'Duff, James Fleming, Alex. Fleming, and several others are Perthshire men, as is also the subject of this present sketch. Alexander Fleming was an elder brother of James Fleming's and a first class man at long distance and cross-country rac s. He was much smaller than James, Lut very tough. 18