e urges, "for
large flocks of wild fowl,--of swans, a _whiteness_,--of geese, a
_gaggle_,--of brent, a _gang_,--of duck, a _team_ or a _plump_,--of
widgeon, a _trip_,--of snipes, a _wisp_,--of larks, an _exaltation_.--The
young of grouse are _cheepers_,--of quail, _squeakers_,--of
wild duck, _flappers_." And yet, careless of these proprieties,
Young America goes "gunning" to good purpose. So with all
games. A college football-player reads with astonishment Tom Brown's
description of the very complicated performance which passes under that
name at Rugby. So cricket is simplified; it is hard to organize
an American club into the conventional distribution of point and
cover-point, long slip and short slip, but the players persist in
winning the game by the most heterodox grouping. This constitutional
independence has its good and evil results, in sports as elsewhere. It
is this which has created the American breed of trotting horses, and
which won the Cowes regatta by a mainsail as flat as a board.

But, so far as there is a deficiency in these respects among us, this
generation must not shrink from the responsibility. It is unfair
to charge it on the Puritans. They are not even answerable for
Massachusetts; for there is no doubt that athletic exercises, of some
sort, were far more generally practised in this community before the
Revolution than at present. A state of almost constant Indian warfare
then created an obvious demand for muscle and agility. At present there
is no such immediate necessity. And it has been supposed that a race of
shopkeepers, brokers, and lawyers could live without bodies. Now that
the terrible records of dyspepsia and paralysis are disproving this, we
may hope for a reaction in favor of bodily exercises. And when we once
begin the competition, there seems no reason why any other nation should
surpass us. The wide area of our country, and its variety of surface and
shore, offer a corresponding range of physical training. Take our coasts
and inland waters alone. It is one thing to steer a pleasure-boat with a
rudder, and another to steer a dory with an oar; one thing to paddle a
birch-canoe, and another to paddle a ducking-float; in a Charles River
club-boat, the post of honor is in the stern,--in a Penobscot _bateau_,
in the bow; and each of these experiences educates a different set of
muscles. Add to this the constitutional American receptiveness, which
welcomes new pursuits without distinction