G. R. Ballance 



SKIING DE IvUXE AT ST. MORITZ 



Long the auto of Scandinavians, the ski, like the skate and the stilt, had a military use. 

 Had there been a league of north European nations some centuries ago, its international 

 army, passing in review, would have disclosed a Swedish ski regiment, a skating battalion 

 from Norway, and Hollanders on stilts. 



operate a linotype machine or deftly 

 handle the paper money in a bank teller's 

 cage. 



Yet the instincts baseball satisfies — the 

 zest of racing to a goal ahead of the ball, 

 the deep satisfaction of diverting a swiftly 

 moving object to serve his own ends, the 

 mere impact of the speeding sphere 

 against the instrument he controls, bag- 

 ging the spheroid as it flies afield, the 

 suspense of nine men as they await the 

 batter's fate — each and all find their 

 counterpart in play as old as animals 

 that walk on two feet and have enough 

 gray matter atop their spinal columns to 

 control nature's laws for their human 

 purposes. 



The foot-race ever was the most popu- 

 lar of the twenty-four Olympian events. 

 The Romans batted balls with the fore- 

 arm swathed with bandages, and the Gil- 

 bert islanders wrap cocoanut shells with 

 cord so they will rebound to a blow from 

 the open palm ; Homer's princess of 



Phseacia is represented in the Odyssey as 

 jumping to catch a ball tossed by her 

 maids of honor; and the Chinese had a 

 game in which a suspended ball was 

 kept hurtling to and fro by blows from 

 the players. Perhaps there was more 

 sport than economy in the old Dutch 

 habit that Washington Irving tells about, 

 of having a lump of sugar swinging 

 above the dinner table from which vari- 

 ous guests at a New Amsterdam banquet 

 took successive nibbles. 



Some historians assert that the Greek 

 games . formed the foundation for the 

 lucid thinking and the lofty art con- 

 cepts that made her product classic. 

 Yet the Olympian and the Pythian games 

 at their best afforded no such spontane- 

 ous, and at the same time intricate, inter- 

 play of muscle and mind as baseball. 



Throwing, catching, and running are 

 as old as man ; but it took the American 

 genius for play, no less distinctive than 

 the American senilis for science, indus- 



109 



