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gentlemen adopt generally has, however, an air of negligent elegance 

 about it which betokens other than matter-of-fact business pursuits. Pot 

 hats and tweed suits are quite as usual in Mark or Mincing Lanes as the 

 topper and black ; while a cigar is an indulgence during business hours, 

 alike in the street and the counting-house. The lachrymose visage with 

 doleful manner of speech no longer exists as a qualification for business. 

 The clerks are of a much better social class than were their predecessors, 

 while they, too, bear upon them an unmistakable hall-mark. The 

 workmen in the cellars, the docks, and the warehouses show in their 

 complexions a healthiness which they never inherited from their 

 parents. 



What is the cause of all this change, a change brought about in such 

 magnitude and within so short a time 1 I unhesitatingly reply, SPORT ! 



Business houses all over England, as a rule, have their doors closed 

 upon Saturdays at from one to two o'clock. ([ regret to say such is not as 

 yet the custom in Ireland. It soon will be, I trust.) Directly the keys 

 are turned away to the country go the clerks and the workmen, there 

 to engage in sport— the younger portion to enter practically into the 

 game of cricket, tennis, or football, while the elder look on with the 

 most intense interest. I have seen old men get perfectly demented 

 from excitement over a game of football when their local club played 

 another, yelling with all their vehemence, " Go it, Leeds ! " " Smash 

 em, Everton ! " 



Saturday being so short a day, the heads of the houses often don't 

 attend business but devote it to field sports of one kind or another. 



When, therefore, a Saturday or Sunday, not to speak of a Bank 

 Holiday, is spoiled by bad weather it is positively a national calamity. 



In our commercial community a man devoid of knowledge of sport in 

 a technical sense is now not to be found ; nor can we except with 

 difficulty find one without the capability of taking an active part in some 

 branch of sport ; while men possessing all the attributes of the sportsman 

 and well able to carry out in practical efiiciency their proclivities are 

 now to be met with in abundance among our merchants. 



Yes, among the thousands who daily transact the business of the 

 nation witbin the neighbourhood of Mincing Lane and the Stock 

 Exchange of London, " on the Flags " of Liverpool, in the Commercial 

 Building of Dublin, as well as elsewhere, are now to be found hundreds 

 of as fine a lot of sportsmen as exists among the ranks of the patricians. 



These rattling fine fellows, while maintaining the trade of our nation 

 in a position by far the most honourable and gigantic in the universe, 

 are well able to hold their own across country, over the moors or in 

 hot cornerp, on rivers or in the cricket field. 



What engendered in our present business man these newly-acquired 

 tastes and to what do we owe the development ? The answer is simple : 

 Love for Sport is inherent in our nation, be the class what it may ; and 

 shorter business hours affording the opportunity, the latent desire 

 immediately hurst Jorth. 



