| Show ANCIENT ROME the spectacle that was presented at the coney island athletic club last night was one to make considerate men think for a time that the wheels of civilization have been turned back a few hundred years and we are again face to face with the gladiatorial arena which filled the avage romans with delight in the name of sport a few thousand men assemble at that well known resort and pay exorbitant prices for the privilege of witnessing oneff the bloodiest most bru brutal and blackguard exhibitions of modern times and the law not only does not interfere with the disgusting business but actually licensee it the sensation imparted by reading the details to Is emphasized by the announcement that the smell of warm fresh b I at the end of the first round set met the audience wild with delight just as it used to the patricians who witnessed the struggle between the gladiators in the roman amphitheatre and who could scarce scarcely IV contain themselves when at last one of the combatants drunk with wounds staggered and fell to the gory ground to rise no more truly these be scones scenes to stir a cultivated man to his depths I 1 and the fact that the smell of human blood has still the old time stimulation for those where such effluvium and the cause of it are abundant that they do not net turn from it in dismay but linger for more and howl with delight over the brutal business does but show that the advancement we have made is after all in the absence of restraint the merest fiction given the same unities coat the ancients had bad and how long would it be before we would be reading notices of fights to a finish finis ht in which one or both of the contestants were slaughtered in the ring and expired in a pool of blood As a matter of fact i men have quite frequently been killed in prize lights yet perhaps aa 88 another evidence that wears we are retrograding the punish punishment punishments mentis is always very light where any la Is inflicted at all which te in not every time the offense occurs mccun by any means against boxing with gloves as aa a and athletic pi pastime when engaged in with moderation and without III ill feeling there is in nothing to be said even exhibitions in which such contests are a feature need not be objectionable on that account but when gloves are used simply because the wording of the law to is such that the contestants will not be allowed to combat without them and they are made so BO hard and so light that they are even worse than the bare lists flats the law lenot is not only set aside b but t made a mocker and when to this Is added an utter disregard for skill and each goes in to wear the other out in a hurry by means mean of brute force pounding hammering battering and punching it is time to call a halt on the whole business given a certain latitude the pugilistic fraternity have taken all they ever had beforehand to more too certainly all ail in the way of brutality and ferocity that the most savage disposition in any age could demand and such was the fight as described in now new york last night the disposition in mankind or a portion of it to evade prescribed regulations and go back to forbidden customs and thus cultivate dul anew the merely animal instincts which have been hold held in repression by force and moral suasion united tor for half a thousand nd years Is in now so 80 manifest that the ab authorities will be just justified ifield in putting an end to boxing exhibitions altogether those who delight in bar bario baric pastimes had bad bett r be controlled while yet they are controllable |
