r vote. But if you do
this without pay, and keep it up for more than eight hours on a stretch,
it then becomes sport of a very high order--and if you continue it for a
considerable period of time, at more or less expense to yourself, you
are eventually given a neat German-silver badge, costing about two
dollars, which you treasure devotedly ever after. A man who walks
twenty-five miles a day for a month without getting anything for
it--except two lines on the sporting page--is a devotee of
pedestrianism, and thereby acquires great merit among his fellow
athletes. A man who walks twenty-five miles a day for a month and gets
paid for it is a letter-carrier.

Also sport is largely a point of view. A skinny youth who flits forth
from a gymnasium attired in the scenario of a union suit, with a design
of a winged Welsh rarebit on his chest, and runs many miles at top speed
through the crowded marts of trade, is highly spoken of and has medals
hung on him. If he flits forth from a hospital somewhat similarly
attired, and does the same thing, the case is diagnosed as temporary
insanity--and we drape a strait-jacket on him and send for his folks.
Such is the narrow margin that divides Marathon and mania; and it helps
to prove that sport is mainly a state of mind.

I am speaking now with reference to our own country. Different nations
have different conceptions of this subject. Golf and eating haggis in a
state of original sin are the national pastimes of the Scotch, a hardy
race. At submarine boating and military ballooning the French
acknowledge no superiors. Their balloons go up and never come down, and
their submarines go down and never come up. The Irish are born club
swingers, as witness any police force; and the Swiss, as is well known,
have no equals at Alpine mountain climbing, chasing cuckoos into wooden
clocks, and running hotels. I've always believed that, if the truth were
only known, the reason why the Swiss Family Robinson did so well in that
desert clime was because they opened a hotel and took in the natives to
board.

Among certain branches of the Teutonic races the favorite indoor sport
is suicide by gas, and the favorite outdoor sport is going to a
_schutzenfest_ and singing _Ach du lieber Augustin!_ coming home. To
Italy the rest of us are indebted for unparalleled skill in eating
spaghetti with one tool--they use the putting iron all the way round.
Our cousins, the English, excel at archery, tea-drinking