commodations of the Carlton or Reform with the sporting
facilities of Queen's. The Country Club is another American
institution which may be mentioned in this connection. It consists of
a comfortably and elegantly fitted-up clubhouse, within easy driving
distance of a large city, and surrounded by facilities for tennis,
racquets, golf, polo, baseball, racing, etc. So far it has kept clear
of the degrading sport of pigeon shooting.

Training is carried out more thoroughly and consistently than in
England, and many if not most of the "records" are held in America.
The visits paid to the United States by athletic teams of the L.A.C.
and Cambridge University opened the eyes of Englishmen to what
Americans could do, the latter winning seventeen out of twenty events
and making several world's records. Indeed, there is almost too much
of a craze to make records, whereas the real sport is to beat a
competitor, not to hang round a course till the weather or other
conditions make "record-making" probable. A feature of American
athletic meetings with which we are unfamiliar in England is the
short sprinting-races, sometimes for as small a distance as fifteen
yards.

Bicycling also is exposed, as a public sport, to the same reproaches
on both sides of the Atlantic. The bad roads of America prevented the
spread of wheeling so long as the old high bicycle was the type, but
the practice has assumed enormous proportions since the invention of
the pneumatic-tired "safety." The League of American Wheelmen has done
much to improve the country roads. The lady's bicycle was invented in
the United States, and there are, perhaps, more lady riders in
proportion in that country than in any other. As evidence of the
rapidity with which things move in America it may be mentioned that
when I quitted Boston in 1893 not a single "society" lady so far as I
could hear had deigned to touch the wheel; now (1898) I understand
that even a house in Beacon Street and a lot in Mt. Auburn Cemetery
are not enough to give the guinea-stamp of rank unless at least one
member of the family is an expert wheelwoman. An amazing instance of
the receptivity and adaptability of the American attitude is seen in
the fact that the outsides of the tramway-cars in at least one Western
city are fitted with hooks for bicycles, so that the cyclist is saved
the unpleasant, jolting ride over stone pavements before reaching
suburban joys.

FOOTNOTES:

[13] I wish to confess