The Prominence of Athleticism in England

I BELIEVE it to be almost impossible for an American thoroughly to realize the overwhelming importance that is attached to physical exercises and field sports in the minds of the well-to-do classes in Great Britain. After the closest personal investigation, he can do no more than wonder in perplexity at the unswerving and solemn perseverance with which two thirds of that great and privileged class, on whom every luxury, both material and intellectual, every opportunity, every advantage, has been showered from youth up, devotes its time to pursuits at which it can scarcely hope to arrive at equal perfection with the Boers of South Africa or the Indians of the Western plains.

It will seem strange to men who, even if they have not ambition themselves, have at any rate been brought up to consider ambition as possible only in connection with one or other of the great walks of life, — with politics, commerce, literature, art, or war, — to see it burning with intense vigor in the breasts of thousands of educated and proud men, whose highest apparent aim is the position of an amateur stagedriver, the command of forty or fifty fox-hounds, the art of striking a ball with a bat more accurately and harder than any other individuals in his county or his country, and the ability to shoot nearly as straight as a market pot hunter, and stand as much hard work and exposure as a Scotch shepherd.

“ English cricket,” remarked a wellknown peer at a public dinner given in London, not long ago, by the lord mayor, “ has reached a pitch of perfection of which the country may well be proud.” The noble lord, who has devoted his life so far to playing games, and is considered in his county a rare patriot, doubtless had in his mind a picture of the assembled nations of Europe, frenzied with rage and envy, and pale with apprehension, watching the mighty strokes of Kentish cricketers, as vaguely but forcibly typical of some overwhelming British supremacy in Europe.

The unfettered mind of America cannot help condemning, with feelings of irrepressible contempt, that miscalled, bastard energy that expends itself alone in frivolity and the destruction of time. In what precise form of self-indulgence the hours and days are passed, what matters it, — whether in toiling after deer on Scottish hills, or in the softer listlessness of fashionable lounges ? The difference, of course, between the existence in the one case and the non-existence in the other of what is called an idle class will be admitted, and allowance made ; but still the difference between justifiable recreation and an utter abandonment of all life’s duties under the veil of a spurious energy that seeks outlet only in those pursuits that are shared by the lowest races and classes of mankind, and shuns with horror, and sometimes even with a shrug of contempt, those paths in life that the accident of nationality, of birth, and of wealth would seem to have combined to fit them for, is immense. To the average American of wealth and position, even inheriting as he does to a marked degree the Anglo-Saxon love of field sports, a life devoted exclusively to a pack of fox-hounds would seem a barren and dreary waste ; and I think I am right in saying he would see nothing in such a position worthy of a moment’s consideration, — nothing but what was puerile, childish, and unworthy of discussion. Public opinion, too, is all powerful in such matters, and public opinion applauds in the one country what in the other she condemns.

In my humble opinion no difference, out of the many that exist between the two great branches of our race, lies so deep as this.

In the one country, so long as birth and wealth are present, and no obnoxious quality is prominent, a life through which no beam of intelligence shines, in which no thought, no wish to be anything but a time-killer of the heaviest description, can be detected, will command among the mass of the people a full quota of thorough respect, untainted with the faintest suspicion of deficiency, or consciousness of there being the least failure of duty. In the other, is it too much to say that position, however materially supported, could scarcely be maintained under like circumstances ? — while respect would be out of the question.

The American view of such matters, if it has been partially framed by circumstances, is at any rate an unanswerable one. Who would wish it otherwise ? The European critic invariably fails in the discrimination between the greed of gain and the inborn desire to be busy, that is quite universal in America only. He is unable to understand reproach attaching to what he considers justifiable idleness, and launches forth on the well-worn platitudes concerning the almighty dollar. If he is a bookmaker or a literary light, he is probably not accustomed to the crash and hurry of Birmingham, Liverpool, or Manchester; and having inherited the tradition that the Yankee in quest of the almighty dollar seldom eats, and always traverses the streets at lightning speed, with his brain immersed in gigantic and probably questionable speculations, Broadway and its adjacent thoroughfares appear to his well-prepared mind a great arena for an immense “ go-as-you-please” competition.

The ordinarily accepted term, as used in this country to describe that large class in Great Britain who are raised above the necessity of working for their living, demands, of course, strong qualification.

It is not necessary for our purpose to inquire how large a proportion of this class would have to be deducted to allow for that admirable body of men who, aided by wealth and social positions, coupled with talents or industry, or both, transact a great part of the business of the nation, are busy in the front rank of the arts, both of peace and war, and bring the talents and capacities of leaders to high posts that a still surviving tradition is ever ready to keep vacant for them; nor by more directly alluding to those whose spheres are most elevated should we forget the thousands to whom occupation is not necessary, either for their comfortable support, their social position, or their character, who give their whole time, sometimes their very lives, for the good of others ; nor yet could we for a moment include in our category those to whom wealth and leisure have given the opportunity, and not robbed of the desire, to follow even one useful or elevating pursuit.

As to the mere fox-hunter, grouseshooter, cricket-player, what is there admirable in such a life? If there were any attempted excuse, or any apparent consciousness of deficiency, on the part of such a man, there would be something tangible to take hold of, and the question would cease to be one of interest and curiosity: but, on the contrary, when, by carefully laid plans, by long drives and railway journeys, by much time and thought, he prevents the cricket season from clashing with the grouse, and the grouse with the partridge ; when, in defiance of the weather, he is unswerving in his attendance at the covert side ; when a month’s frost and consequent abstinence from hunting finds him utterly devoid of resources, and a vacuum in his brain like that of a day laborer’s on strike, he not only fails to see anything unworthy in his career, but is firmly persuaded that he is leading the ideal life of a manly Briton. He would, I think, honestly fail to see anything in it trivial or shallow; he would most likely consider himself an energetic, hard-working man, and be utterly out of reach of any argument, and very probably inwardly despise any one who could not look at the matter through the same strangely colored glasses as himself.

“ I care for nothing but hunting, shooting, and fishing,” writes an exlandlord, quite lately, while inquiring through the columns of The Field for a cheap residence abroad. You must be an Englishman to understand the exact spirit in which this is written, and the spirit in which it will be taken by the masses. Such a confession in the columns of the public press in any other country would be taken as the apology of some harmless idiot. Not so here, however. Impossible as it may seem, an Englishman will recognize it instantly as having a great deal more of the boastful than the apologetic, and two thirds of the rising generation, on reading it, will mentally chronicle that unknown curiosity as “ a fine fellow.”

The singularity, however, lies not so much in the fact of a vast number of individuals, whom accident has made independent of occupation as regards their living, devoting themselves with business-like energy to self-indulgence, as in the more than toleration, the semiadmiration, with which the workaday world, in its intervals of labor, from the prime minister to the agricultural laborer, looks on and cheers the barren feats or the school-boy gambols of grown-up children. Physical superiority, in short, is the fashion in England, and the public will shout louder and longer at excellence in amusements than they will at excellence in those qualities which help to advance their country, and the cause of civilization, and the good of men.

It is not necessary to be an Englishman to realize that truism, nor, like the writer and hundreds of others who say nothing, and thousands more who may be unconscious of it, to have had the intellectual life of their youth crushed out of them by the absorbing demon of athletic or sporting ambition. English novels, even the daily press, bear ample witness of the exalted pedestal on which mere frivolous pastimes are placed. Social position in England is everything, and social position prides itself on being independent of the necessity of a cultured mind. It prides itsell very much on being, at any rate, considered as possessing all those qualities that are demanded in the recommendations of a stud groom, a gamekeeper, or a coachman ! My eye rests on an article in an English paper, just to hand, descriptive of a meet of the four-in-hand club. “ It was a treat,” says the writer, “ to see the way the Duke of B—— brought up his coach in the unmistakable manner of a master of the art. But then coachmanship is hereditary in the S—— blood.” Noble trait for a ducal house ! Again, “ By the side of Mr. —— was that fine old country parson, the Rev. —— ——, of whom the fair county of —— is so proud.” It was my lot in early youth to reside for many years in the immediate neighborhood of that fine old country parson, and to share to a full extent that admiration which, as the reporter truly says, his native county accords him. Why is he admired, petted, courted, noticed by royalty ? For powerful sermons, for untiring energy in parish or diocesan work, for a pure, unselfish, and devoted life ? Not at all ; but because lie has spent a considerable portion of his ministerial career in the saddle, kept for several years a pack of hounds and hunted them himself, and because he combines a firm seat in the saddle with a topographical knowledge of his own locality that is said to be unrivaled. That he has not entirely neglected his parish work, preaches as well as his neighbors, and has sometimes ridden fifty miles on Saturday night to be in time for Sunday morning services is looked upon as so much evidence of condescension and self-denial as would greatly enhance any popularity he might have had if he had been a country squire. That, as a parson, he is the “ pride of the fair county of -” is an excellent instance of that singular and unaccountable Philistinism, not unmixed with snobbishness, more clearly felt than described, which pervades the country. What an encouragement, the foreigner would feel tempted to say, to the hard-working self-denying, earnest young clergy of that fair county !

That clerical monstrosity, the foxhunting parson, is, fortunately for the credit of the church of England, rapidly disappearing from her lists ; and if ritualism has taken too firm a hold of ecclesiastical matters for some people, it would be hard indeed for the most prejudiced to deny that that movement has been the most powerful agent in sweeping away the musty cobwebs of neglect and sinecurism that disgraced so many of her remote districts.

When we read, in the local paper, that at a public dinner in the town hall Sir John Sabretasch, K. C. B., occupied the left of the chairman, and Mr. Reginald Redcoat, M. F. H., sat upon his right, no sense of the ridiculous is supposed to strike us in the unconscious but still seemingly apparent equality in importance at which these two affixes are rated. The one marks, perhaps, the successful leader of some campaign in which the honor of the nation and something more has been at stake; the other the ownership of a pack of hounds, which are as often as not intrusted to the sole charge and management of a hired servant, who in turn, from the mere fact of his being connected with field sports, will be treated as an incomparably more important person than his brother, the thrifty tradesman, and will combine in the highest perfection all those offensive characteristics, which so often distinguish the dependents of great establishments.

I think T am not wrong in saying that the title of M. F. II. would be more deeply respected, by one half of the rising generation of England, than all the other letters indicative of military or intellectual distinction that her majesty or her institutions could affix to a subject’s name. Of course this is very droll, — no contemptuous epithet could be found strong enough to apply to it; but it is nevertheless a part of our social system; it has eaten into our lives and become a part of our traditions. So great is the human material we have to draw upon, so great our wealth, so great the vigor of the middle classes and the working portion of the upper classes. This monomania is powerless to arrest for a moment the stream of our national life and industry. It pervades only that quiet backwater which plays around with bats and balls and fishing-rods and guns, and which, by an odd paradox, calls itself ‘‘ the world,” and by the still stranger force of habit exacts the tribute of admiration and respect, and whenever possible of imitation, from the busy stream that turns the wheel that makes Great Britain what she is.

It must be borne in mind that the cant we are accustomed to hear from youth up, to refresh one another’s national pride with and to believe as an article of faith, maintains that a great part of our country’s prosperity and glory is owing to the fact that three fourths of our male population who are raised above the necessity of work have employed their time in cultivating their physical rather than their mental qualities. That cricket and football, hunting and shooting, etc., have made England what she is, is firmly believed by nearly every British upper-class youth. That Wellington is reported to have said, while watching the games in the playing-fields of Eton, that “ it was here where fields were won ” is handed down from generation to generation of British school-boys, oblivious of the more famous exclamation of Napoleon, who, in his rage and despair at the unyielding red squares that defied his cavalry on the field of Waterloo, “ swore that with British privates and French officers he could beat the world.” Now Hodge and Thomas Atkins, when they succumb to the allurements of the recruiting sergeant, have not generally spent their lives in riding blood horses across country, or iu shooting partridges ; and if they have played a little cricket on the village green on Saturday evenings, such relaxation would have small effect on the muscular physique of men who, in common with the peasantry of all other countries, are accustomed to hard toil from morn till night.

The idea that an army officer requires any brains at all, the Philistinism of young England has always jeered at, and still does to a great extent. A fixed idea that a youth who can ride across country well, and does not care to do much else except, perhaps, dance, and who would look on the studies connected with his profession as an unmitigated bore, is more adapted to handle a company of infantry under critical circumstances than a man who has proved himself to be of more than average mental calibre and of more than average intelligence, is still quite common among the least intelligent half of our educated classes. An inexplicable reluctance to give respect to intellect and mental ability and a zealous eagerness to worship physical prowess characterize a large portion of our people.

It is not that we wish to attempt to prove any extent of damage done to the national life at large by these in some ways harmless eccentricities of national sentiment. The craving of the privileged and educated man to turn his attention to fields of fame, and demand applause for feats at which the unlettered boor can excel him, is certainly a very odd one ; ambition, so to speak, in inverse ratio. The envy with which the American backwoodsman regards the erudition of the city lawyer is utterly devoid of any consolatory reflections that the lawyer could not hit a hat at the distance at which he could drive a nail in with a rifle. The backwoodsman values intellectual accomplishments at a far truer estimate than the British aristocrat ; for the former would never dream of comparing the advantages derived from a higher education with the rude arts of which he is a perfect master, and would probably be the first to despise a college-bred man who gave up his career and took to hunting. While little harm, perhaps, is done to the nation at large by the false standard of estimation set up in England by that social body to which the weak and the young especially look as their guide, the unrecognized damage done to individuals is incalculable : the germs of intellect withered at an age that exists only for imitation ; the dormant seeds of talent and desire for mental culture natural to a gently nurtured race destroyed often before they have had time to sprout.

Immense sums lavished on the education of their sons by parents who can sometimes, perhaps, but ill afford it produce nothing, too frequently, but a certain stereotyped manner and general bearing, that a certain portion of the British public calls “ good form,” but is a thing in itself quite distinct from what the outside world calls “ good breeding.'’ although it may or may not, of course, be accompanied by that desideratum, a matter dependent on home influences and home training. The result, however, is very often skill in one or two athletic games so wonderful that great and historic universities will frequently, while the subject is yet a schoolboy, become quite agitated for the honor of his presence. These advantages confer also on the youth the much-prized distinction of being able, in after life, to write himself “ a public-school and university man,” and up to the time he leaves college, at any rate, and sometimes all through life, to feel a sort of mild, contemptuous pity for all those unfortunates who have not received what he considers to be the only complete training the world affords. This feeling, which has no offensive aspect about it, but is rather a deeply rooted tradition, is of course most vigorous and intolerant in the breasts of those whose minds have most successfully resisted the great intellectual opportunities that such a career has put constantly within their reach, and have nothing to show in the way of tangible benefits but a sideboard covered with trophies of the river aud the running path.

A deep sense of the actual benefits of culture and education has no part in creating this overweening and narrow estimate of excellence. You could not touch the pride of an average English school-boy by comparing the intellectual attainments of his school-fellows unfavorably with those of a rival institution. “ Swotting,” “ sapping,” “ mugging,” “ grinding,” “ fagging,” imply by their sound the contempt in which the common herd of public-school boys hold all independent efforts at mental culture and future distinction, and with such he has less than no sympathy. Hint, however, at similar comparisons in the more important matters of cricket and football, and all his quickest susceptibilities will be aroused ; all the force of an esprit de corps, resting almost purely on a basis of athleticism, will flash out. There is no class of civilized beings upon earth more governed by habit and custom, and more intolerant of everything outside their own narrow circle, than the average young English gentleman. (I lay stress on the word “ average,” as implying the majority that come between those whom talent or mental ability or mental refinement has freed from the common ruck and the hopelessly coarse and dissolute.) To him every difference of a manner from his own that he sees in his travels is a difference for the worse, and leans of necessity in the direction of snobbishness or vulgarity. In every fellow-creature whose coat is not cut upon his own lines he is too apt to see at once the “beastly cad.”

Speaking again of the universities, there are certain colleges, both at Oxford and Cambridge, whose under-graduates actually pride themselves (or used to, a very few years ago) on being unrepresented on the honor lists, and who indignantly resent fancied attempts to make their institution a “ reading college,” on the part of freshly elected Fellows and tutors, as a direct damage to its social prestige. Could a parallel to anything so ludicrous be found in any other country ? The inclination of a proportion of young men, and especially rich ones, to be idle is natural everywhere, but the inexplicable sentiment that takes a pride in being so, and jealously cherishes a reputation for the same, may safely be said to be peculiarly British. So immense is the importance attached to physical prowess that the standard of a certain class of college in Oxford and in Cambridge may, without exaggeration, be said to depend, to a great extent, on the position of their boat on the river. As an instance of this, in the writer’s college days, Jesus, Cambridge, though an eminently respectable foundation, did not pretend to rank among those colleges of Oxford and Cambridge which the traditionary or temporary patronage of birth, wealth, intellect, or athletic fame entitled to the appellation of a firstclass college, speaking relatively. Since that time its boat has been distinguished in numerous aquatic contests, and consequently the whole standing of the college has undergone a complete change. There has been of late years a demand upon its resources by youths of the description that are supposed by the unintellectual public, at any rate, to reflect lustre upon such institutions, and who would, a dozen years ago, have to a certainty omitted Jesus College from their list for selections.

At the period to which I have just now alluded, to have spoken of Brasenose College, Oxford, with anything but deep respect, in any representative audience of public-school boys and undergraduates, would have been deemed by a large majority unmitigated heresy. Brasenose at that time had six or seven members in the university cricket eleven, and its boat was head, or nearly head, of the river ; in addition to which it was well represented during the hunting season at the meets of neighboring packs of fox-hounds, — in short, “ a good college all round,” in the eyes of every one but the distinctly intellectual few. It was a matter of no importance that its reputation for teaching and scholarship was at zero, and that the character of its entrance examinations was such as, whether rightly or wrongly, to furnish amusing anecdotes to the admiring youth of the day. The examiner, for instance, would be depicted listening to a wellknown athlete, fresh from school, and in a genial, gentlemanly manner discussing with him his late performances in the playing-field, and finally concluding the interview with a cordial shake of the hand, and an assurance that he might consider himself a member of the college. Whimsical reports, too, used to circulate that the “ chief ” was in the habit of making furtive visits to the playing-fields -of the great public schools, with an eye to strengthening and maintaining that athletic prestige of his college on which he was supposed, with undoubted justice, to lay such stress.

These are but mere instances of the way in which academic institutions may be affected in popularity and consequent prosperity by success in pursuits that are, whatever enthusiasts may say, diametrically opposed to furthering the higher aims of student life and a cultured state of society.

The University of Cambridge being a seat of learning, and divided into numerous colleges, whose attitude towards one another has through all time necessitated a natural and healthy rivalry, an outsider would suppose that the possession of senior wrangler and senior classic would be considered each year as the greatest possible triumph that one college could win from the others. As it is, however, whatever enthusiasm is felt for the most famous under-graduate of his year is limited to the quiet satisfaction of a few tutors and professors, and a certain flutter among that select minority of the university who, as professed “ reading men,” have throughout their youth, from different reasons, successfully combated the athletic mania, and have been free to imbibe the full benefits, and to realize the true value before it is too late, of the advantages offered by one of the most splendid institutions of learning in the world.

About a boat race, on the other hand, words can scarcely describe the engrossing enthusiasm that night after night makes the banks of Cam and Isis the scene of the wildest excitement. The triumph and despair that in such contests, and all others of a like nature, take possession of winners and losers are so ludicrously real and solemn that the ends and aims of colleges and schools would seem to have been almost lost sight of, and their actual importance to have become hopelessly entangled, in the minds of the majority of their inmates and patrons, with the success or otherwise of their crew or their cricket eleven. Masters, tutors, and professors may gnash their teeth at the ugly rival which snatches so many youths, while still in their declensions, forever from their influence; but the wrong idol has been set up on a pedestal from which it will be hard to displace it, while so great is the force of custom that many of these very educators themselves bow down unconsciously to the brain-devouring god, and aid in that hero worship of the mere athlete that to an outsider must and does look so grotesque.

An American or a German youth has, we may fairly suppose, the same natural tendency to idleness as his British confrère; that, however, when he goes to school or college, is all he has to struggle against. Years and years of distinction, and the unbounded praise and adulation of his school-fellows, of that part of the outside world whose applause is most flattering, and to some extent even of his teachers, are not held before his eyes as the possible premium for sticking diligently to his amusements. For him there is no easy and broad road to fancied fame, enticing him away, to his own irreparable injury, at the very gates of life, even before what little of judgment and discretion extreme youth can claim has had time to develop. With the young American it is simply a question of natural apathy or idleness, unendorsed and unapplauded by any class whose opinion even the most frivolous could value, versus distinction in that race which is recognized as the only one worthy of competition, one whose prizes confer on their winners not merely the material benefits that are common to all countries, but social position and the admiring envy of their fellows as well. His play hours may or may not be occupied with cricket, baseball, football, and the like ; but all these are secondary, mere pastimes, though they are eminently healthy and desirable as such. His position among his fellows depends to a very small extent upon his success in these, and not, as in England, almost altogether so. In another respect, too, he starts at a greater advantage than the majority of his British kinsmen, for as each generation in America has, with certain qualifications, to depend much more upon its own individual exertions, and receives less shelter, either material or social, from the ægis of its forefathers, so from earliest youth each one is more apt to feel the privilege of a high education from a commercial stand-point. The American youth is brought more face to face with money, and as a rule possesses a knowledge of its purchasing value that in the young Briton of the class to which we allude is conspicuously absent. It is to very few of the latter that an expensive education ever occurs in the light of an investment, but it is rather looked on as a right inherited and as a matter of course. All this is more or less natural, from obvious causes, though to be deplored as offering less resistance to the demon of athleticism.

Take the English lad of thirteen, just entering a great public school, his faculties as yet unawakened, and ready to receive impressions that will probably control his whole future destiny. He is solemnly shown, by his new companions, the god-like forms of the chosen cricketers who represent his alma mater in what his youthful mind already regards as almost historic contests. They occupy in Iris eyes, and consequently too often in their own eyes, a position with regard to their actual importance and deserts for the absurdity of which it would be in vain to look for a parallel. He himself, unless he is a particularly sickly or weakly boy, is examined as to the extent of his accomplishments in the out-door line, and placed accordingly in the carefully graded list into which his five hundred companions are by various methods divided. One day to climb the dizzy heights now occupied by those heroes who wear continually the distinctive badges that mark them as the athletic champions of their school, and to receive themselves all the adulation, attention, and interest that are bestowed upon those not only by their school-fellows, the public, and the press, but to some extent even by their very teachers, becomes too often the one aim of the young boy’s existence. His actual tasks will perhaps be gone through without discredit, lest his play hours should be encroached upon, and if he is naturally bright he will acquire in eight or ten years education enough to pass the ordinary examinations into the professions, and so on ; but whatever intellectual life or desire for culture, books, science, art, may have been inherent in him will be soon stifled ; the passion for physical prowess will increase as the golden years, teeming with splendid opportunities that can never recur, speed by, their value scarcely recognized ; and the only fortunate circumstance is, perhaps, that the national insanity regarding such matters, that permeates all classes and all ages, prevents a great proportion of those regrets which, under other circumstances, would with maturer years too surely follow such a wasted youth.

The idle and the vicious alone are benefited by the absorbing mania, or made, at any rate, temporarily less objectionable. To actual morals, ultraathleticism may, among school-boys, be also of some slight service; but the few that are thereby kept for a time out of mischief and bad habits, which, after they leave school, are quite as prevalent among sportsmen and athletes as among others, are hardly worth the enormous intellectual sacrifice that unceasingly continues to smoke upon the altars of this mock heroism.

The specially gifted few, the vitality of whose intellects is too strong to be repressed or warped by the most overwhelming pressure, even of such Philistinism, at the tenderest stage of their development, are outside our present argument, and in all probability derive more unmixed and lasting good from an English public school than they or their equals could from any other educational establishment on the face of the earth.

It is the immense majority that come between these two classes whose weaker, or often only later, mental development is put to a test that is most iniquitously unfair, and the force of which it is almost necessary to have been an English public-school boy thoroughly to realize. To localize the blame is an impossibility. To combat a resistless national mania, that seems to increase rather than lose in strength with the advance of civilization, would be a hopeless undertaking for one set of individuals, if, indeed, any such are to be found entirely uncontaminated, in spite of themselves, from very attrition, with the fetish worship of this grotesque idol. For several generations we have been rolling in wealth, with a teeming population. The millions created by a powerful, enterprising middle class maintain an enormous army of hereditary income holders, great and small, who perpetuate the feudal tradition, shared by the red Indian and the Jamaica negro, that idleness is becoming, but whose innate Anglo-Saxon energy breaks out by a curious perversity in every imaginable kind of useless exertion, which demands no mental qualities, and in which the advantages of education have no influence. It is fortunate that a good standard of morality and honor, as a whole, prevails, and that a physically robust and honest, if aimless, existence leaves nothing worse than an absurdity in the spectacle of a gentleman of birth and fortune devoting himself with intense earnestness to the business of an amateur stage-driver, and being respected or at least not ridiculed for it by four fifths of the public.

A. Granville Bradley.