OUTING having thus an international field to work in, the American editors have called to their assistance a thoroughly competent English editor, whose authority and reputation on all sporting topics is admitted on both sides of the Atlantic. For this most important position we are happy in obtaining the services of no less a light than the world-renowned “Borderer,” who for the past decade has been one of the leading contributors to every publication of reputation in England, and whose knowledge and judgment in sporting matters is second to none. He needs no further introduction from us; let him speak for himself.
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INTRODUCING OUR ENGLISH EDITOR.
I CANNOT outdo the Ethiopian in changing the color of my skin—even in putting on a new coat, the color must be the same. The question of its fitting is a serious one, and you know, readers, how uneasy and uncomfortable a thing it is to wear a new garment for the first time. You feel like a marked man. When a schoolboy you were pinched by all the other boys in commemoration of the event, and however proud you may have been of the fit, it took the edge considerably off your conceit to be asked, “Who’s your tailor?”
And now that my old garment—the delight of many a play hour, the warm friend of my youth, the custodian of my body in many a sport, the well-worn aid to health and strength—has been thrown aside and taken to the old-clothes shop to be refitted, I find myself very like the nervous schoolboy about to run the gauntlet of fresh critics, and perhaps ruthless ones; critics who know not the Borderer of old; who have not followed his rambling prose through many years, and caught the drift of his sporting thoughts; critics, too, whose tastes may not be so thoroughly in harmony with his as those of yore. And yet, perhaps the fear is greater than the reason for it, and on the score of plenary indulgence at starting, I shall try to make my new garment, the English editorship of OUTING, as appreciable as possible to my new acquaintances. Would that I could say with Oliver Goldsmith—
“He cast off his friends as a huntsman his pack,
For he knew when he pleased he could whistle them back.”
OUTING is now our pet. Through it Borderer can speak to the world of sport.
What makes Jack a dull boy? The lack of OUTING.
“Funny name, that,” exclaimed a friend of mine the other day, “but, after all, very expressive.”