342 SPORT INDEED 



even bait. In season it affords fishing " as is fishing," 

 and the Izaak Waltons wend their way thither from 

 distant parts to pursue their fascinating sport. 

 Among these Waltons may be found all sorts and 

 conditions of men from the sole President of the 

 United States down to the multitudinous John Smith. 



Verily, the old Anglo-Saxon love of sport must 

 have been born in us. It sways the lives of us all, 

 else why should the shibboleth of black bass be more 

 potent than the seductive charms of polite society, the 

 beneficial properties of the "White's waters, or even 

 the cuisine delicacies of its great hotel ? But so it is ; 

 and I, for one, should be sorry to have it otherwise. 



Yet, stay a moment. I have been too hasty in con- 

 ceding so broad a sway to this Anglo-Saxon love of 

 sport. I should have excepted that anomalous tribe 

 of men for whose benefit this book is written and to 

 whom the writer will now preach a short, ding-dong 

 sermon. It is quite likely they will turn a deaf ear to 

 the ding-dong and pronounce the preacher a one- 

 stringed harper and a crank of a tautophone. Per- 

 haps he is ; yet if there be any American business 

 men whose eardrums are not split by the jingling of 

 dollars, they may now hear some wholesome strains 

 from his single string and ought to be delighted to 

 find so much benign melody in the crank of a tauto- 

 phone. Gentlemen-drudgers of humanity, your train 

 of thought, freighted with funny notions of felicity, 



