266 The Sporting Dog 



particular track can, in condition, do a mile in less 

 than I : 40, while the best horse on the track could 

 not beat i : 38, a percentage plenty wide for bet- 

 ting purposes, but very narrow as related to horses 

 in general. A Yale foot-ball player may be de- 

 scribed as the weak brother of the team. Readers, 

 especially those who know little of the game, 

 easily imagine that the young man is a poor speci- 

 men among other young men, whereas he is a 

 picked athlete, and weak only by a small margin 

 as compared with the three or four other men in 

 the whole land who play the position better. 

 Sporting writers are compelled to pronounce opin- 

 ions within the respective grades of performance, 

 but on top of that they are rather more of the 

 Sir Oracle than is wholly necessary. And the 

 worst of it is that deductive writers pick up these 

 reportorial phrases as not relative but absolute 

 records, and deliver dogmas to the multitude 

 about inferiority and deterioration. 



The corrective is to remember that on a first- 

 rate race-track every horse is fast ; that when the 

 big colleges compete in foot-ball, every player is a 

 selected and trained man ; that in every prominent 

 field trial of dogs each pointer or setter has been 

 chosen from among many good ones, and that not 

 even a yellow ribbon ever goes on the collar of an 

 inferior dog at one of the big bench shows. In 

 the presence of the sophisticated a dabbler would 



