atch, the length of time, the
number of bouts, and the result. The doctor decides when a wound is
bad enough to close the contest.

At the word "Los!" the blades sing and whistle in the air, the work
being done almost wholly with the wrist, some four blows are
exchanged, there is a pause, then at it again, till the allotted
number of bouts are over, or one or the other has been cut to the
point where the doctor decides that there shall be no more. We follow
them downstairs again, where, after being carefully washed, the
combatants are seated in a chair one after the other, their friends
crowd around and count the stitches as the surgeon works, and comment
upon what particular twist of the wrist produced such and such a gash.

I have seen scores of these contests, and during the last year as many
as a dozen or more. There is no record of any one ever having been
seriously injured; indeed, I doubt if there are not more men injured
by too much beer than too much sword-play.

It is perhaps expected that the foot-ball player should sneer at bull-
fighting; the boxer at fencing; the rider to hounds at these Schlaeger
bouts; and that we game-players should say contemptuous things of the
contests of our neighbors. Personally, if one could eliminate the horse
from the contest, I go so far as to believe that even bull-fighting is
better than no game at all. As for these Schlaeger contests, they seem to
me no more brutal than our own foot-ball, which is only brutal to the
shivering crowd of the too tender who have never played it, and not so
dangerous as polo or pig-sticking, and a thousand times better than no
contest at all.

I am not of those who believe that the human body and that human life
are the most precious and valuable things in the world. They are only
servants of the courageous hearts and pure souls that ought to be
their masters. Without training, without obedience, without the
instant willingness to sacrifice themselves for their masters, the
human body and human life are contemptible and unworthy. I claim that
it braces the mind to expose the body; that an education in the
prepared emergencies of games and sport, is the best training for the
unprepared emergencies with which life is strewn.

The most cruel people I have ever known were gentle enough physically,
but they were hard and sour in their social relations, and often
enough called "good" by their fellows. The disappointments, losses,
sorrows, defeats