Show ATHLETIC SPOETS OF 1EN TORE lfORIrnEN In looking over the Herald or more likely the News or the Journal Jour-nal or some other distinctly popular pop-ular paper you will see a brief paragraph par-agraph stating that the employees of the Smith Manufacturing company com-pany defeated the Jones Brown and RobInson Brothers club in a boat race or game of base ball Now you will never hear of those sturdy I young toilers as the spring games or the annual meetings of New York or the Manhattan Athletic clubs there is never a runner among them who will make Mr Meyers tremble for his laurels the ghosts of the old original Atlantics could pitch and catch and bat them into oblivion at the national game but they are in I fact the truest athletes of all They do not seek semiprofessional celebrity cele-brity the applause of their friends especially their female friends and such a Jine as you have read in the journal they most attest represent repre-sent to them all that fame and glory can give They work in modest retirement for strength and health and they get it There are such clubs as these inmost in-most of the large mercantile and manufacturing establishments and they compete with each other in amore a-more or less friendly spirit There is a certain social rivalry between different houses in the same trade often between different divisions ot one house Compositors do battle with pressmen weavers with dyers the hands in the wholesale department depart-ment with the hands in the retail store Any morning you may read in the Sun or Star that a certain valiant lithographer for instance offers to row or to wrestle with any other lithographer for the championship cham-pionship of the lithographers Sometimes you will learn in this way of strange and mysterious callings call-ings undreamed of by the general public You will read mayhap of a doublewadder who desires to be known as the strong man of all the doublewadders in New York and who will put his prowess to the test with any other doublewadder be he never so mighty of muscle who will meet him on the peaceful field where doublewadders are wont to put the shot or throw the hammer The peaceful field is generally a small Shutzen Park or picnic woods upon the Harlem or over the river in Jersev It is natural that men who make their living by manual labor and earn their bread literally in the sweat of their brows should be athletes Likewise the athletic clubs of the militia regiments may be taken as a matter of course And with the apparent inseparableness of a collegiate from an athletic education edu-cation we are all familiartoo too sadly familiar perhaps But it is surprising to see how the mania for forming associations for physical exercise has spread through all the classes of a great city The young men of a certain neighborhood gather together and get up a loosely organized little club to play baseball or cricket the establishment of a good bowling alley is the signal for the appearance of half a dozen man bowling clubs each one of which has its evening when it holds exclusive possession of the floor and on Murray Hill where baseball and tenpins are in no great favor the young men and women of each little set get ease and grace and strength to dance the nightly German ry i uracticing at lawntennis l in the armories or in public halls which are to be had cheaply for use in the daytime and there they acquire the semiprofessional semiprofes-sional skill shown in their championship cham-pionship matches at NewportH C Bunner in Harpers Magazine |