and putting the
fifty-six pound protest. Thus we lead the world at contesting Olympian
games and winning them, and they lead the world at losing them first and
then contesting them. In catch-as-catch-can wrestling between
Suffragettes and policemen the English also hold the present
championship at all weights. And so it goes.

We in America have a range of sports and pastimes that is as wide as our
continent, which is fairly wide as continents go. In using the editorial
we here I do not mean, however, to include myself. At sport I am no more
than an inoffensive onlooker. One time or another I have tried many of
our national diversions and have found that those which are not
strenuous enough are entirely too strenuous for a person of fairly
settled habits. It is much easier to look on and less fatiguing to the
system. I find that the best results along sporting lines are attained
by taking a comfortable seat up in the grandstand, lighting a good cigar
and leaning back and letting somebody else do the heavy work. Reading
about it is also a very good way.

Take fishing, now, for example. What can be more delightful on a bright,
pleasant afternoon, when the wind is in exactly the right quarter, than
to take up a standard work on fishing, written by some gifted traveling
passenger agent, and with him to snatch the elusive finny tribe out of
their native element, while the reel whirs deliriously and the hooked
trophy leaps high in air, struggling against the feathered barb of the
deceptive lure, and a waiter is handy if you press the button? I have
forgotten the rest of the description; but any railroad line making a
specialty of summer-resort business will be glad to send you the full
details by mail, prepaid. In literature, fishing is indeed an
exhilarating sport; but, so far as my experience goes, it does not pan
out when you carry the idea farther.

To begin with, there is the matter of tackle. Some people think
collecting orchids is expensive--and I guess it is, the way the orchid
market is at present; and some say matching up pearls costs money. They
should try buying fishing tackle once. If J. Pierpont Morgan had gone in
for fishing tackle instead of works of art he would have died in the
hands of a receiver. Any self-respecting dealer in sporting goods would
be ashamed to look his dependent family in the face afterward if he
suffered you to escape from his lair equipped for even the simplest
fishing expedition unle