Hence I assume that the average American of the better class is not imbued with the sporting spirit. He wears it like an ill-fitting coat. I find a singular feature among the Americans in connection with their sports. Thus if something is known and recognized as sport, people take to it with avidity, but if the same thing is called labor or exercise, it is considered hard work, shirked and avoided. This is very cleverly illustrated by Mark Twain in one of his books, where a boy makes his companions believe that white-washing a fence is sport, and so relieves himself from an arduous duty by pretending to share the great privilege with them.
No one would think of walking steadily for six days, yet once this became sport; dozens of men undertook it, and long walks became a fad. If a man committed a crime and should be sentenced to play the modern American game of football every day for thirty days as a punishment, there are some who might prefer a death sentence and so avoid a lingering end; but under the title of "sport" all young men play it, and a number are maimed and killed yearly.
Sport is in the blood of the common people. Children begin with tops, marbles, and kites, yet never appreciate our skill with either. I amazed a boy on the outskirts of Washington one day by asking him why he did not irritate his kite and make it go through various evolutions. He had never heard of doing that, and when I took the string and began to jerk it, and finally made the kite plunge downward or swing in circles, and always restored it by suddenly slacking off the cord, he was astonished and delighted. The national game is baseball, a very clever game. It is nothing to see thousands at a game, each person having paid twenty-five or fifty cents for the privilege. In summer this game, played by experts, becomes a most profitable business. Rarely is any one hurt but the judge or umpire, who is at times hissed by the audience and mobbed, and at others beaten by either side for unfair decisions; but this is rare.
Football is dangerous, but is even more popular than the other. You might imagine by the name that the ball is kicked. On the contrary the real action of the game consists in running down, tripping up, smashing into, and falling on whomever has the ball. As a consequence, men wear a soft armor. There are fashions in sports which demonstrate the ephemeral quality of the American love for sport. A while ago "wheeling" was popular, and everybody wheeled. Books were printed on the etiquette of the sport; roads were built for it and improved; but suddenly the working class took it up and fashion dropped it. Then came golf, imported from Scotland. With this fad millions of dollars were expended in country clubs and greens all over the United States, as acres of land were necessary. People seized upon this with a fierceness that warmed the hearts of dealers in balls and clubs. The men who edited wheel magazines now changed them to "golf monthlies." This sport began to wane as the novelty wore off, until golf is now played by comparatively few experts and lovers.
Society introduced the automobile, and we have the same thing—more magazines, the spending of millions, the building of the garage, and the appearance of the chaufeur or driver. Then came the etiquette of the auto—a German navy cap, rubber coat, and Chinese goggles. This peculiar uniform is of course only to be worn when racing, but you see the American going out for a slow ride solemnly attired in rubber coat and goggles. The moment the auto comes within reach of the poor man it will be given up; but it is now the fad and a most expensive one, the best machines costing ten thousand dollars or more, and I have seen races where the speed exceeded a mile a minute.
All sports have their ethics and rules and their correct costuming. Baseball men are in uniform, generally white, with various-colored stockings. The golfer wears a red coat and has a servant or valet, who carries his bag of clubs, designed for every possible expediency. To hear a group of golfers discuss the merits of these tools is one of the extraordinary experiences one has in America. I have been made fairly "giddy," as the Englishmen say, by this anemic conversation at country clubs. The "high-ball" was the saving clause—a remarkable invention this. Have I explained it? You take a very tall glass, made for the purpose, and into it pour the contents of a small cut-glass bottle or decanter of whisky, which must be Scotch, tasting of smoke. On this you pour seltzer or soda-water, filling up the glass, and if you take enough you are "high" and feel like a rolling ball. It is the thing to take a "high-ball" after every nine holes in golf. Then after the game you bathe, and sit and drink as many as your skin will hold. I got this from a professional golf-teacher in charge of the —— links, and hence it is official.
The avidity with which the Americans seize upon a sport and the suddenness with which they drop it, illustrating what I have said about the lack of a national sporting taste, is well shown by the coming of a game called "ping pong," a parlor tennis, with our battledores for rackets. What great mind invented this game, or where it came from, no one seems to know, but as a wag remarked, "When in doubt lay it to China." Some suppose it is Chinese, the name suggesting it. So extraordinary was the early demand for it that it appeared as though everybody in America was determined to own and play ping pong. The dealers could not produce it fast enough. Factories were established all over the country, and the tools were ground out by the ten thousands. Books were written on the ethics of the game; experts came to the front; ping pong weeklies and monthlies were founded, to dumfound the masses, and the very air vibrated with the "ping" and the "pong."
The old and young, rich and poor, feeble and herculean, all played it. Doctors advised it, children cried for it, and a fashionable journal devised the correct ping-pong costume for players. Great matches were played between the experts of various sections, and this sport, a game really for small children, after the fashion of battledore and shuttlecock, ran its course among young and old. Pictures of adult ping-pong champions were blazoned in the public print; even churchmen took it up. Public gardens had special ping-pong tables to relieve the stress. At last the people seized upon ping pong, and it became common. Then it was dropped like a dead fish. If some cyclonic disturbance had swept all the ping-pong balls into space, the disappearance could not have been more complete. Ping pong was put out of fashion. All this to the alien suggests something, a want of balance, a "youngness" perhaps.
At the present time the old game of croquet is being revived under another name, and tennis is the vogue among many. Among the fashionable and wealthy men polo is the vogue, but among a few everything goes by fads for a few years. Every one will rush to see or play some game; but this interest soon dies out, and something new starts up. Such games as baseball and football, tennis and polo are, in a sense, in a class by themselves, but among the pastimes of the people a wide vogue belongs to fishing, and shooting wild fowl and large game. The former is universal, and the Americans are the most skilled anglers with artificial lures in the world, due to the abundance of game-fish, trout, and others, and the perfect Government care exercised to perfect the supply.