Rowing and Track Athletics (extract)

Track Athletics might nowadays call sportsmen of the old school who were glad to hear of such a scheme. In a letter to the writer telling something of these early days, that veteran of the track, Mr. H. E. Buer– meyer, gives a few words of personal history, which would apply equally well, doubtless, to many an– other man of the same tastes and the same gen– eration. " I have been interested in sports ever since I was fifteen years old," he says, "having rowed in a boat race in 1854, and I can recollect reading about foot races in Bell's Life and the New York Clipper more than fifty years ago. I had several sporty English acquaintances, who were much interested in wrestling, pugilism, pe– destrianism, etc., and that's the way I got interested in those things as a boy, and have kept it up more or less ever since." The reply to the circular was prompt and enthusiastic. The club was organized. J. Edward Russell was elected president, three hundred members were soon enrolled, headquar– ters were secured in what is now Clarendon Hall, East Thirteenth Street, and on November 8, 1868, the club's first games were held at what was then the Empire Rink, at Third Avenue and Sixty-third Street. It was at these games that spiked shoes were first worn in competition by an American amateur. Mr. Buermeyer, who was treasurer of the new club and present at the games, gives the following history of these