Chapter II: Part 2

A man would be considered a great fool if he placed a valuable racehorse in the hands of an ordinary stable-man to be trained for a great race, and the horse would stand little chance to win unless handled by an experienced trainer who had made it his business for years to learn all there was to know on the subject of handling valuable animals. He would give hours of observation and thought, he would know to a hair’s weight what the animal could stand physically, any mental idiosyncrasies would be studied and sought to be overcome. But the average person who has charge of children as a rule not only does not know even the anatomy of the child, but the formation of its mind and the proper way of training that mind, and bringing it to a full and perfect development, is often not even considered a matter of importance. I do not wish to imply that these people are purposely negligent of their duties, I merely wish to point out that the large majority do not realise or understand, from their imperfect training, either duties or responsibilities, the idea being very often that children will turn out good or bad men or women quite independently of their upbringing and the influence brought to bear on them during the early years of their development.

DANCING

For many years I have been a most ardent admirer of Miss Isadora Duncan, and there is no doubt that in the revival of classical barefooted dancing she stands out with great brilliancy. All praise is due to her as a creator of this school of dancing, and those amongst us who seek to follow in her footsteps do so, I fear, but feebly. I think I am right in saying that all the sincere classical dancers wish to forward this school, not merely from the point of view of making money on the stage, but from the educational value they feel it ought to hold in the upbringing of all children of both sexes. And that this value is very great has been proved as much as such a young movement can be proved by Miss Duncan, M. Jacque Dalcroze, and others. Though, of course, the eurhythmics of Jacque Dalcroze is a system of training entirely different in method from that of any one else.

_From a Photograph by the Dover Street Studios_]

One of the greatest advantages that classical dancing holds over the toe-dancing school is that it is possible to become proficient in it by giving a short time daily to its practice, instead of the many hours and years of arduous work that a toe-dancer has to go through before becoming a finished exponent of the art. One is an accomplishment that we all ought to be able to enjoy, the other is only possible for the woman who means to make it a profession, and give the best years of her life to it. Though to become a good classical dancer it is not only necessary to take a child and instruct it in the art of moving gracefully if the rest of its education does not assist in the teaching. From earliest infancy it must be taught to observe, to concentrate, to realise the beautiful in line and colour, and to have the ugly and repulsive kept away from it, encouraged to copy beautiful poses and eventually express to music in movement what that music says to it. The educational value of classical dancing is that its expression has to come from within. A toe-dancer is very often merely a brilliant machine. Her dance is often composed for her by her professors, and her well-trained muscles merely respond like a perfect machine to their commands. It therefore follows that the educational value in such dances is practically nil, apart from the dancers having had to learn muscle-control, patience, and endurance, which of course is of use. A child trained to classical dancing in the right way will, by the time it reaches full growth, dance, I feel sure, as we were all meant to dance, every muscle in control and the mind enveloped in the glory of expressing beauty by perfect rhythmical movements. Having worked on the stage as a classical dancer for a short time I was a good deal saddened by the adverse criticisms I heard on all sides, about the bare-footed school of dancing: general sameness and general dullness were the two most severe. My own dancing being criticised I did not mind. I was merely a beginner, and beginners nearly always have to suffer. I asked many and various people as to the reasons of these criticisms and always got the same answer: ‘Very pretty, yes, but when it is seen once, that is sufficient. Interesting, I dare say, to painters and sculptors who know when a pose is pure and a faithful copy of the antique, but the general public don’t, and all the poses and dances look much alike.’

At that time I used to get angry, and salved my wounded feelings by putting these people down as narrow-minded and inartistic, but at the bottom of my heart I felt that they had some right on their side. I went several times to see classical dancing which was supposed to be good, and tried fairly with an open mind to criticise it. After a good deal of sincere study and thought on the subject I came to the conclusion that to a great extent these criticisms were right. What was lacking I was sure was the absence of any real joyousness and life in the dancing. The dancers did their best, but with the exception of Miss Duncan’s work, which carries a splendid joyousness in it, the dancing was curiously dead and heavy. The poses were good, the arms and body graceful and trained, but the legs and feet of most of them were totally untrained, the muscles soft and flabby, thus causing every movement to be devoid of life. In fact, an exact antithesis to the toe-dancer, who very often has wonderfully trained legs and a great rigidity of arms and body. The Russian dancers have to a great extent got away from this very ugly style.

_From a Photograph by the Dover Street Studios_]

Many contend that the ancient Greek dancers, whom the present-day classical dancers try to copy, did not train their legs for dancing, but merely used them as supports for the body and arms, to which all the graceful movements were confined. Personally, I feel sure that the Greeks if they trained their bodies and arms for the dance did not neglect the legs and feet, as they were known to insist most strongly in their physical education on perfect muscular development throughout the body.

_From a Photograph by the Dover Street Studios_]

Then came to me the problem which I have attempted to solve during the last three years. Is it possible to combine Greek poses, graceful body movements, and plastic light movements of the legs, so that the whole may be welded and work smoothly together. In fact, to try and resemble the Russian dancers in their lightness and charm, but avoiding the tortuous and unnatural movements and positions favoured by the toe-dancer. I felt sure that a great deal of the lightness of the toe-dancer’s work could be brought with great advantage into the classical dancer’s, and still lose none of the simplicity and purity which is the barefooted dancer’s ideal, rather in fact add to it, as it is quite unnatural to have heavy, uncontrolled muscles. This can be proved by watching the dancing of savages, whose movements may be grotesque, but every muscle is under control, and each movement sure. The answer to all this by many would be that it is only necessary to remove the tights, shoes, and ballet-skirt from any of the leading toe-dancers, replace them by a Greek drapery, and you will have a perfect classical dancer: for many of the Russians have shown that they have studied a certain amount of this work as far as poses go in some of their ballets--‘Narcissus,’ for instance. But there are several insuperable objections to this, one of the foremost being that an experienced toe-dancer’s bare foot is nearly always a thing of horror to look at. Secondly, a toe-dancer gets all her positions with her foot pointed as stiffly as possible, and her foot when not on the ground is never otherwise than pointed. A bare foot pointed, even a well-shaped bare foot, is an extremely ugly thing. A toe-dancer’s foot has at all times to be rigid. She gets her muscular control from the rigid foot upwards, and it would be an unheard-of fault for a toe-dancer to allow her foot to become limp at any moment while dancing. Again, a classical dancer must have her bare feet limp exactly like her hands: the greatest difficulty I found was to keep the feet limp and get the muscular control in the legs, also not to let the feet look dead. All dancers have to conquer this difficulty in their hands when learning to dance. A limp hand and a dead-looking hand are two very different things. I have worked hard for three years at what I think I am justified in calling a new form of bare-foot dancing. I make no pretence of having perfected it, but I hope it is a step in the right direction towards dancing that shall be perfect in pose and expression, and that will help the human mind and body to retain its birthright of beauty.

_From a Photograph by the White Studios_]

_From a Photograph by the White Studios_]

SWIMMING

If asked which style of physical exercise I should recommend to bring nearly all the greater muscles of the body into play, and be of all-round value to the exerciser, I should unhesitatingly say swimming--and it is with a good deal of pleasure one notices how greatly on the increase the learning of swimming is amongst well-to-do people, and that parents are beginning dimly to realise what an incalculable amount of good children of both sexes gather from this exercise. Having seriously studied swimming and diving since I was fourteen years old, I feel that I am at liberty to speak strongly on the subject; of the good that can be got from indulging in one of the most pleasurable physical exercises there are, and also the harm that can result from bad teaching, &c.

Having been a member of the Bath Club, London, since it first opened, I have had every opportunity of studying swimming and the people who swim--and there is no doubt that the Club has done an enormous lot to encourage learning swimming amongst the rich and their children, particularly the latter, averaging in age from three years old and upwards; also, of course, I have swum and watched swimming in many other countries and baths. An interesting thing is that most of the men anyway who swim seriously, going in for competitions, exhibitions, &c., are gleaned from the working classes, not from the idle rich, who one would imagine have far more time and opportunity to perfect themselves. But the art of swimming and diving is curiously little excelled in by the latter. They of course know how to swim, as that is taught at most public schools--but few get any further, the real swimming world being composed nearly entirely of hard-working men. This, of course, refers to England. When I first began swimming it was thought quite out of the common to take an interest in this exercise, and women who swam, amongst one’s friends, could be counted on the fingers of one’s hand. As to high diving, that was looked at in horror and amazement.

Then the Swedish divers came to London and gave exhibitions of high diving; and people began to realise that there might be something worth while in this art beyond the ordinary flopping-along breast-stroke through the water, which was about as much as the average woman, anyhow, dared to try. Swimming clubs for both sexes began to crop up, competitions were started, prizes given--and the standard rose by degrees to what it is now. Not high enough, by any means, but an enormous improvement on fifteen years ago. I personally think that what makes the Swedish divers stand out as a rule head and shoulders above any other divers is their marvellous realisation of form in their work, and to define what one means by form is almost impossible. Some will say a diver with a great deal of finish has good form, personally I think it quite possible to be an absolutely finished diver and yet lack a great deal in form. It seems to me that the great dash and boldness and muscular control the Swedes exhibit in the air has a great deal to do with it. One of the above qualities is often seen, but all three together seems almost unique to the Swedish divers.

Perhaps it may be interesting to mention the difference between a plain English dive and a plain Swedish dive. As regards the positions--the English dive is taken with the hands pointed straight up above the head, from the tips of the fingers to the end of the toes the body ought to be in a straight line. The Swedish plain dive is the swallow dive, so called from the position of the hands and arms out from the shoulders at almost right angles. During the flight through the air the back is hollowed as much as possible. A man doing a high running swallow dive greatly resembles a bird swooping down, and the beauty of line that the best divers manage to get into it is remarkable.

Of course the muscular development and control needed in high diving is very great--therefore making it a most valuable exercise. A really good high dive and perfectly developed and controlled muscles are bound to go together.

I think that the beauty in the art of diving is greatly under-valued, and gracefulness not nearly enough insisted on in the teaching of it; like all other physical exercises unless fitness and beauty of the body are the aim of the exerciser, they ought to be left alone, little good will certainly be gathered from any form of exercise if it is entered into merely in the spirit of competition, and not with the wish to improve the body and the mind. Most exercises of a vigorous kind will help a person mentally: for instance, the mind would have to be a seething mass of corruption if it was past being helped by the contact and feel of cold water after a rush through the air from a height; unclean and impure thoughts that crowd gaily and with little shame under the electric lights in a crowded restaurant would not venture to show themselves when the body is tingling and the mind rioting with joy from a swift rush through the sunlit air into a still pool in a river, or even into the green depths of a swimming-bath. No; exercise aided by cold clean water and fresh air do not walk hand in hand with uncleanliness of spirit, and if only this was more understood and realised by parents, how much unhappiness and peril might be saved their children. As to the teaching of children--swimming ought to be taught to all and taught in the right spirit--not regarded as a means to clutch a gold medal from some less fortunate brother or sister, but a glorious means of helping themselves mentally and physically, and an exercise that ought to be put within the reach of rich and poor; and, I feel most strongly, taught, as all physical exercises should be taught, to man and woman, as a weapon to combat through life temptations and sorrows which come to all on life’s journey. It is only necessary to watch small children splash about in pool or bath to understand what great joy can be given them and in a very easy manner. Taught and helped they make marvellous progress and even the quite small ones will strive to perfect themselves in stroke or dive--also love of the water seems to breed good temper and good fellowship, therefore surely that love is to be encouraged. As to the harm that can be got from swimming I think it is the same that can be found in any exercise that is practised in a harmful manner. Overstrain is particularly liable in children who are allowed and encouraged to race each other until their hearts are bumping, which also leads to bad swimming. I am sure no serious racing ought to be allowed to the young until the strokes are sure and perfect.

Again, children, in baths especially, are allowed to stay in far too long. No time limit can be given, I know, as one child can stay in the water a great deal longer than another, but constantly one sees children blue with cold and exhaustion, and when they are taken out of the water only too often parents and teachers hurry them off to stand under a hot shower-bath or, a still worse evil, take them into the hot room of a Turkish bath to get warmed up, consequently an overtired, flushed child is the result, instead of a happy, brisk, and refreshed one. Less time in the water, and, if cold, a few exercises or a romp to warm up after, will be far more successful and also stop the plaint which is often dinned into our ears--‘Such a pity my child can’t learn to swim, but she or he always catches cold afterwards.’

Small children can learn, apart from the ordinary breast and side strokes, all the so-called fancy work in the water, of which there are many different varieties--all of them being a great aid to gracefulness and sureness, and delighting children as well as grown-up people. Personally I am no believer in high diving for young children, as the muscles are seldom either strong or controlled enough to make a fair certainty of the dive being a good one, and if it isn’t I do not think it is good for a small child to hit the water in the wrong position.

They certainly ought to learn to dive and to dive well, but not from more than a ten-feet board--until they can really make a certainty of a good clean dive from that height. I mention this as often one sees ambitious parents urging on their children to dive from a thirteen or fourteen feet board, when they cannot properly dive from three feet. Of course a good teacher will not permit this, but good teachers are few. Grown-up people also often make the same mistake, and go falling off high boards long before they can dive from a low one. Also in the minds of non-swimmers or divers there seems to exist the curious belief that high diving is a gift. I have often been met with reproachful looks after a dive, and the words, ‘I really don’t know how you do it, it is _quite_ wonderful; and you know I have tried and I can’t spring a bit like you can; isn’t it a shame!’ When answered somewhat prosaically that it has taken fourteen years of hard practice to acquire that spring, and that it is necessary to have the muscles developed in the legs and body before it is possible to dive at all with any skill, watch the non-swimmer’s mouth and you will see the one word ‘liar’ forming silently thereon!

These are a type who appear in swimming-baths and stand about on the edge rarely venturing into the water, and, when they do, struggle about in a half-drowned condition, believing that to show any muscle or knowledge of swimming is to be thoroughly ungraceful--if not hopelessly vulgar. They also have another trying habit, and that is of paddling feebly round in circles always just on the spot where the divers from the high boards must enter the water. When the frantic instructor tries to explain the situation, they stare wildly round the edge, but nothing will ever induce them to look up to where the danger comes from. More than once I have become weak from laughter, standing on a high board watching the instructor and paddler--also when eventually the whole bath starts shouting at them and they are removed, it is a certainty that in a sort of hypnotised condition they will be back in the same spot shortly.

There is also another type very prevalent at swimming-baths, as I know for my sins, and these are women who come and stand about on the edge of the baths, for what reason I never could discover, unless it is to talk, but it seems a damp and uncomfortable spot for indulging in conversation. They always stand with their backs to the water, and seem to be absolutely unconscious of both bath and swimmers. It does not the least matter that there may be the most convenient balcony with comfortable chairs provided for those who wish to watch the swimming, not at all--nothing short of violence will move them, and if there is a low diving-board handy, they always stand on it. Polite remarks such as, ‘I wish to dive, please,’ or ‘Please I want the board,’ uttered in a beseeching fashion, has no effect whatever. For years I treated these people with politeness, but eventually my temper broke, with excellent results, and I have now adopted a way which is instantaneously effective, and I offer the suggestion with great pleasure to any of my fellow-swimmers who have suffered in the same manner. Here it is--brush past them heavily once or twice so that they get thoroughly wet, if that is not effective run lightly up behind and shout ‘_Board!_’ with all the strength your lungs are capable of, that will generally cause them to jump several feet into the air, and while their nerves are still trembling place them in the hands of an attendant to conduct to the aforesaid balcony!

It is extraordinary how keen people get about swimming even when they have taken it up quite late in life--I know several who swim regularly, and work away at diving with the greatest diligence, and it is much to their credit, as learning diving after you are full grown is a most painful exercise, and if you are well on in years and heavy I should have thought doubly so--and one would have imagined not a very healthy exercise, but I know one or two women who are well past middle age who have only the last year or two taken up swimming and diving, and they seem to benefit greatly by it. I think it a very great question as to whether giving swimming-baths to the very poor is an advantage or not--I do not mean for a moment that they ought not to have swimming-baths and also learn to swim, but done as things are at present with insufficient instruction, and water that is changed only once or twice a week, the risk of infection is great. If people who do not wash regularly use swimming-baths, and a bath with soap is not made compulsory before entering the public water, then running water through the bath ought to be the alternative.

Let me once more urge parents to have their children taught to swim, in the proper fashion, and with the proper ideas as to its value and place in life, for there is no better sport or exercise than swimming and diving to instil in a child’s mind purity and self-control, and drive away that present-day great usurper of the mind, uncleanliness of thought, the beginnings of which, alas! can sometimes nowadays be seen in even the quite young.

BIG GAME SHOOTING

Nowadays it is the fashion for the wealthy young man about town to go to India or Africa to hunt big game. So it may be of interest to discuss a little this big game shooting from an educational point of view--which point of view had not arisen, and of which there was no need, before or during the last generation. But, alas! different times and different men have turned hunting into a mere pastime of the lowest kind--into an excuse for killing in an unsportsmanlike fashion, to be used as a sop for a feeble, decadent vanity.

Such mighty hunters as Mr. Selous and the late Captain Gordon Cumming made it possible only to honour and respect in every way such men, who hunted in a clean, hard, fearless manner, spending their lives and caring little of the way they risked them, so long as the task set was accomplished. There was no necessity then to question as to the sportsmanlike manner in which big game was hunted. It is more than a pity that the same cannot be said at the present day.

In imagination one sees the many mighty hunters of bygone days: the men who laboured and sweated in Africa during the time when elephant ivory was a paying game. The years of hardship, of carrying one’s life in one’s hand--the only thing that kept death away, an antiquated rifle that took a minute to load--these were men to whose memory all real sportsmen must doff their hats and bend their heads in reverence.

One or two are still left to us, and written on their faces is the story of the lives they have led--a story clean and fine to read--eyes that look out with no shiftless look, bright and clear as steel; firm lips that have suffered, perhaps, but have never trembled from fear; lines drawn plentifully by the sun-god, but each line shaped by a wholesome thought. No sagging lines of self-indulgence in these faces; even if they had their merry roystering times on their few returns to civilisation, they wiped out the marks by the months of arduous and self-denying living which they spent hunting. Some to make money, others because they had been born hunters and would continue to hunt until the Most Mighty of all Hunters stretched forth His hand and claimed them in their turn.

Sportsmen these in the greatest sense of the word. Turn in your graves, ye who have passed on! Or, rather, let us pray that it is denied to you to see the men and methods that follow so feebly in your footsteps.

Let me try and compare the going forth to hunt of a rich young man of the present day, and one of these old hunters. The rich young man starts, say, from Mombasa--it is the pet place of rich young men, as it is easily got at, and a non-feverish hunting-ground can be reached with little trouble. He, the rich young man, is quite often accompanied by a professional white hunter, who takes all trouble from off his shoulders, engages his men, runs the whole outfit for him, and generally acts as male nurse to the rich young man, seeing that he does not run his valuable head anywhere in the direction that danger might lurk. He is, as a rule, a first-class shot, so if his charge misses or maims a dangerous animal, he can always rectify matters. In fact, he sets the scene, writes the play, acts as audience, and the rich young man plays the chief part, and the whole thing as much resembles real big game hunting as the theatre resembles real life.

Of course the running of the caravan is in itself no light work, as the rich young man would find it terribly uncomfortable to travel with less than sixty or ninety men, there are so many things to carry, tents, chairs of different kinds to rest the aching back, tables, dozens of plates, spoons, forks, and knives, beds, a mosquito-room to dine in, champagne to restore the rich young man after his fatiguing day, two or three portmanteaus of clothes--he might get fever if he did not change constantly, and to sit about in sweaty clothes is very dangerous he has heard--and then, my God! he might die, if he hasn’t brought a doctor with him this time: he most certainly will if he ventures back into Africa again.

The above may seem exaggerated, but I can most sincerely assure my readers that it is not. It is merely the modern young man’s idea of sport.

Bah! let me take a deep, clean breath, and get back to talking about the real men, the hunters of old whom we can respect and look up to, and feel glad that sometimes they will let us sit at their feet, and learn from them a little of the wisdom they have massed together during years of solitary travel. They are always quite modest men, putting little value on their brave deeds, regarding it all in the day’s work--though sometimes their eyes will sparkle as they tell of some great adventure in bygone days. For it is near to their hearts, this life of wandering, and they would lead no other. To do an unfair or cowardly act would be an impossibility to these men, they are just good sportsmen, and they want no fairer name.

How different their hunting! One or two men would carry all they needed for months of travel; no stock of tinned food here, they ate what they killed, and if they killed nothing, went without. A little flour and rice, a knife, a spoon, perhaps a fork!--it was not a necessity, so why take it? A small tent, a few odds-and-ends, a couple of shirts. Everything worked down to the lowest limit. Not how much can we take--the new gospel--but how much can we do without, and they did without most things. They were there to hunt to the best of their ability, not to coddle their bodies; they would have been ashamed to do that at any time, as coddled bodies and clean souls do not as a rule go together, and these men were essentially clean-souled.

Yes, they were out to hunt big game--man against beast--teeth and claws against rifle--fair and square we met him and the best of us won. Sometimes they died of fever, sometimes they were killed by the animals they hunted--but one thing may be a certainty, and that is that each and all who met his death did so fearlessly and with no repining. They had taken the chances, and if the chances were too many for them, it was all in the day’s work.

How pitifully few of our modern young men will stand comparison with these old hunters--and it is in the comparing of the old with the new which brings up the question in one’s mind as to whether it is not actually excessively wrong from all points of view to hunt in the manner indulged in by the man of the present day.

The question as to our right in the taking of animal life is bound, I suppose, to arise in the minds of all who have children to educate, and who think at all--and I personally find it one extremely hard to answer, and am fain to make a compromise, which I know is, as a rule, a great mistake: the young as a rule do not question, they hunt and take life in a purely heartless fashion, seeming to feel no doubt as to the right or the wrong of it, and while this is felt I should say hunt if--and this is a very large if--the hunting is done so that benefit for mind and body is got from it; but there is little doubt that, indulged in as it is by the rich at present, it becomes a merely degraded form of amusement. In the future, perhaps, we shall understand more clearly and realise more definitely as to whether the taking of an animal’s life is wrong or not. Let me try and explain what I mean when I say sport ought only to be indulged in when of benefit to body and soul.

It seems to me the only permissible excuse for killing ought to be, firstly, for food; and secondly--by far the most important--that in the pursuit and killing of game, a man becomes a finer, cleaner type owing to the life he is forced to lead during that pursuit. It is a life in the open air. He has to work hard, to lead a primitive life, and generally has a chance to brush away from his mind and body the uncleanly thoughts and clothes that are fostered and imposed by civilisation. He must be independent, relying only on his own strength and skill; he must live and hunt as nearly as possible as his savage forefathers lived and hunted, and, having shaken clear of civilisation, he has time to examine his mind and generally get things into their proper perspective. He gives himself a chance to face his God and himself if he does this fairly (and a few months of a primitive, clean life will make him do it in spite of himself); he will come back from his hunting trip a better, saner, and stronger man mentally and physically than when he started, and his hunting will have provided the object necessary to encourage him to lead this kind of a life. And now we come back to the question, to kill or not to kill. There are certain people, but rarely young people, who can go out and lead a hard, primitive life, for the sheer love of the thing and for the good of their souls, and not need any definite object to lure them on and keep their minds busy. But the average man has travelled such a little way along the big road of thought, that he requires to have something to amuse the superficial part of his mind while he is straightening and patching his tired soul and body.

Therefore, if killing is only used as an excuse for leading a clean, healthy life, and it is done in a sportsmanlike fashion, it seems to my humble judgment better to hunt and be clean, than not hunt and be unclean. A compromise, I know, but the only one my poor judgment allows me. If sport is not undertaken to make a better man of you, nowadays, when it is not a necessity to hunt to live, then leave it alone, for it can only deteriorate and hinder. Worthless is the man who goes out hunting with no reason for his going beyond nurturing his personal vanity, with the desire only of bringing home so many heads and skins and showing them off to admiring relations and friends. Only too often, he cares little if the trophies were gotten in a sportsmanlike manner; he goes, accompanied by all the trappings and comforts of civilisation, everything arranged and made easy, often even to having the animals he hunts found and marked down for him. In fact, he sets forth to accomplish a series of well-arranged animal murders, and he calls it sport.

It would be truly instructive, if it were possible, to turn one of these so-called men loose in Africa out of reach of civilisation, and make him live as the real hunter of past days lived, dependent entirely on his own eyesight, skill, and endurance. I very much doubt if one week would not see him dying or dead, as from constant self-indulgence from earliest youth, and soft living of all kinds, his eyesight is rotten, his hearing is of no use whatever, and his staying power, unless bolstered up by incessant stimulants, does not exist at all. Unless the hunter of old had had all his senses very finely developed, he would not have got very far, and Africa would have claimed more white lives than she has already done.

The unfortunate thing is that this type of decadent young man who overruns the healthy hunting-grounds of Africa, has done, and is doing, a great deal of harm to sport. He has more money than brains and he has no self-respect whatever. Therefore he indulges in a form of sport that is no sport at all, but merely the seeking of a worn-out, unhealthy mind after amusement. He goes in for a form of vice in sport, which is a lust to kill in large numbers--how, does not in the least matter, it is the quantity that matters; quality even does not attract him largely, rather three small heads than one good one.

Also, to be cruel is perhaps more amusing than not to be cruel. I do not think I am wrong in saying that in the old days the man who did not kill as quickly and cleanly as possible would have been called a bad sportsman. Boys were brought up to consider sport a very serious thing, and to be named a good sportsman more or less hall-marked you. They regarded sport very seriously, these great-grandfathers of ours, and often in a manner which would appear to us with wider interests somewhat ridiculous. But the trouble is that sport is still freely indulged in--big game hunting more than it used to be, since great distances can now be covered with ease and comfort--and the good old rules as to what made a good sportsman and what didn’t, have, instead of becoming more stringent, almost ceased to exist. The high ideals which the old sportsmen kept constantly in front of them have gone, and in their place reigns a most unwholesome desire to slaughter at all costs, which has naturally led to many cruel forms of hunting that would not have been tolerated in the old days. Fair play for man and beast was the gospel of the old hunters. Amusement for the hunter is the cry nowadays, and a poor lot of human beings indulging in a very poor form of sport is the result.

A ceaseless endeavour to kill dangerous animals, and to remain perfectly safe while doing so, is, from a sportsman’s point of view, a somewhat nauseating sight. A favourite device of this sort is tying up a live animal, such as a donkey or a goat, climbing up a tree to a safe perch, and from there shooting lions, &c., which will come to devour the tie-up. The feelings of the said tie-up during the hours of waiting do not require much imagination to realise.

Hunting a lion with a pack of hounds, four or five men on ponies with rifles, is another very favourite pastime nowadays. It has its advantages in being fairly safe--for the men; the hounds, of course, may suffer. The King of Beasts--would any one recognise him by that name, as, hunted, winded, dazed by the clamour of many hounds, he tries to make the long grass?--and, when he does make a break for the open, it does not matter if one rifle misses, or only wounds him, there are always two or three more to finish him off before he can retaliate.

If we will not face him on our feet, man and rifle against beast and claws, would it not be more sportsmanlike to leave him alone? A pack of hounds and four or six rifles against one lion. Well it is that you mighty lion-hunters, who, unaided and badly armed, sought out and killed your lions by sheer skill and bravery, taking all chances, and only proud if the chances were against you--well it is that you have passed on; or do your spirits still haunt that land of fascination and disease, and, perchance, mourn over each great beast that is done to death by the hands of degenerate creatures, who manage to preserve their worthless lives against your mighty strength, merely by being able to entirely obliterate from their minds what the words ‘good sportsmen’ once meant?

It would be of some interest to know how many lions, of the many that are killed nowadays, are met face to face, one man on the ground against one lion. Not so very many, methinks. One hears so much about the number of lions killed by So-and-so, but the methods of killing are generally left to the imagination of the listener. I believe there have been people degraded enough even to trap lions and think no shame of it. Hardly would this be permissible even if there was a famous man-eater to be killed, unless every other sporting method had been tried and failed. Why this type of creature, who does this sort of thing and boasts of it, is not taken and given a horse-whipping, and then expelled from decent society, I know not--except that I suppose the old sense of fairness and good sportsmanship is breathing its last. I felt this very strongly when in London a short time ago, I went to see some moving pictures of big game taken in Africa. One of the pictures remains unpleasantly clear in my memory: it was that of a hyena in a trap, caught by one leg; it grovelled along on its belly, tongue out, covered with dust, in an agony of fear, and showing the hideous misery of despair to be seen only in the eyes of trapped animals; he ceased his convulsive efforts to get free for the moment, and he was then stirred up with sticks, so that his struggles might prove an amusing picture to be shown all over the world. It was explained during this picture that the trap was padded and could cause the animal no pain, as if pain of a wounded limb be felt or matter much to a trapped animal. It is the terrible fear, the feeling of helplessness and being at the mercy of all comers,--they who have always been free--look at their eyes; and even if they be sorely wounded, it is not pain you see there, but sheer, horrible terror, the terror of the trapped animal, a thing to stamp out quickly by a merciful death, or, better still, give it back its freedom. It was also explained that anyway it did not matter much as the hyena was a horrible animal! Fifty years ago, if moving pictures had existed and such a picture had been shown to a house full of men, women, and _children_, I feel certain that it would have been greeted with hisses instead of the applause it received, and the man who had the indecency to show such a picture would most likely have visited the nearest horse-pond. Trapping has been done for years, as a rule to kill vermin, but it is generally left to paid men and regarded as a disagreeable necessity. We have come to sorry times indeed when we can regard the struggles of a trapped animal as an amusing spectacle, and take no shame in letting our children see such methods of sport. It is not only in hunting dangerous game that cruelty is indulged in, for it exists still more freely in the chase of the non-dangerous kind. Little shame is felt in wounding, and allowing a wounded animal to get away to die slowly in great pain from his wound, or perhaps to be eaten by one of the greater hunting animals.

Unless a man is a perfect shot, he is bound to wound sometimes. But he ought to do his level best to find the animal and put it out of its pain. Nowadays there seems a sort of slackness about bothering to go after a wounded animal, which must come from a total want of imagination, and also from the lack of having it instilled severely into boys’ minds like it used to be, that to wound and not to kill was something to be very much ashamed of, and that, if it had been done, it betokened a failure and a falling-off from the moral standpoint of a sportsman. When this feeling was strongly developed, men were more careful how they shot; they would not shoot at animals at a distance that five times out of six they were bound to miss or wound; they hunted more carefully, and took more pains about getting within reasonable distance before firing. The mass of stuff that goes away wounded in Africa from indiscriminate firing at long distances would make a vast total if it could be counted up. I imagine boys also used to be taught a more thorough knowledge of sport. The hunting of the animals was considered of as great an importance as the letting off of the rifle. A man was not content to have the beast found for him, and he himself led up to it, the rifle placed in his hands, and sometimes told even when to let it off! A good many of the young men of the present day would be greatly at a loss, I fear, if they had even to clean their rifles themselves, and to take a rifle to pieces would be a Chinese puzzle to them.

The old hunters were a mine of information on the countries they travelled in, and on the habits of the animals they hunted. The present-day man seems almost as if he were deaf and blind, so little does he know either about the animals he hunts or the countries he travels in.

Surely sport regarded merely as a means to get so many heads and skins, not caring if the lowest and most unsportsmanlike methods are used so long as so much stuff is collected, must have only the most degrading effect on the man who indulges in it.

Gone are the days when to live we had to hunt and kill. So if we now hunt at all, let it be as an excuse to be in the great open places of the world, bettering ourselves in mind and body. And let us at least try only to employ sportsmanlike methods, and to follow staunchly along the road that those mighty hunters of old marked so bravely for us.

RELIGION

It is hardly possible to pick up a newspaper nowadays without seeing the word education heading many columns of printed matter containing the views and theories on this subject from all kinds and conditions of people and from all parts of the kingdom. Most of the newspaper discussions are generally about the more or less trivial failings on the part of our modern education, and rarely seem to make any definite effort to discuss the serious evils which exist, and owe their existence to the curious lack of reason and understanding in the rearing of our young. It seems difficult to understand how any one who has ever given the matter a moment’s serious thought can fail to realise the hopelessness of the present methods of education, which the average child of both rich and poor has to suffer from--both during the period of that education and in their lives afterwards where the effects of it follow them to the grave.

The evils of modern education are many, and not to be eradicated in a day; but the great root of most of these evils, and that from which they all spring, is that our children are given no God to worship, or, rather, they are given a name, to which they gabble a prayer morning and night, titter at if they hear mentioned, and thoroughly abominate on Sundays on account of the boredom and discomfort inflicted on that day in His Name.

Surely it would be well worth the experiment to replace what is merely a disliked or ignored name with a real and living God in the children’s minds, and I think the result would be that education would be helped farther towards a perfect and sound basis than it has ever been before.

Teach them to have something strong and wonderful to believe in, a reason for doing the right and avoiding the wrong, a great and splendid helping presence, a living thought, instead of a hopelessly unjust and tiresome nonentity, which at present is what He represents to the average child.

Many people are trying and trying faithfully to find out the cause of the failure in our modern education; and why, when so much money is spent, results are so disappointing. Yet it seems to occur to few that it is building on sand to try and impress upon the brain of a developing human being the right way of living and learning, and at the same time giving that human being no true reason as to why that way is more right than any other way. The extremely young will believe, perhaps, that because mother or teacher says such-and-such a thing, that it is right, but the brain a little more developed rejects an edict given with no reason behind it, and I feel most sincerely certain that until God is made into a real living and helping thought in the mind of the young, education will remain much where it is. From our schools and homes a stream of men and women will continue to issue forth with indifferent educations, lacking in culture, and with the lowest of ideals, who are helpless prey to the first and strongest influences that may seize on them. If the influences are for the good, all may be well; but if they be for the bad, what help or strength has ever been given in our education, mentally or physically, to assist in combating them?

Religion as it is taught to the average child is not only worse than useless, it is a blasphemy!--a strong word, I know, but a true one; take any average child, rich or poor, and mention the Almighty to him or her, and see the result: either a blank and uncomprehending stare will be the result, or an inane giggle, followed by a bored and long-suffering expression. Is not that blasphemy? Not from the child, whose fault it is not, but from the people who are responsible for that child and its upbringing.

I have travelled in many lands, but only in English-speaking countries have I found the name of God treated with so little respect and understanding amongst the young. And yet we call ourselves Christians, the meaning of which word is followers after Christ. Children are the most reasonable of creatures, and give them really strong and beautiful reasons for everything they are asked to do, and they will cling to those reasons with the greatest of strength and faith. Surely if we could conquer our curious aversion to bringing God’s name into our daily lives, except when we wish to take it in vain, it would make a wonderful difference in the rearing of our children--to try and make Him into a real and living presence, to help and strengthen in work and play, not merely a Name to be bored, frowned, and laughed at; and I feel certain education would show the most surprising results. It is indeed difficult to understand that any one can seriously believe that the manner in which religion is taught to children in our schools and homes can ever have any influence or be of any help to them in their future lives, still less in their work at school.

I imagine the question that might be asked is: What have the Almighty and school-work to do with each other? Personally, I think the answer is, ‘Everything.’ Unless the feeling of God’s presence and help is made a real thing to children in the little worries, difficulties, and joys of childhood, unless they learn to turn to Him in those small trials, they are not, I think, likely when the large troubles of manhood and womanhood come along to look for help and comfort in the only direction from which it can come.

The feeling of His nearness ought never to be absent, whether it is a sum to be struggled with or a page of history to be conquered; the sum is struggled with and the page of history conquered, not because of the punishment that might occur otherwise, but because a brain has been given to us to be taken care of and developed to the best of our ability, and that to neglect to develop it is to show that a trust God has given us has been misplaced.

Later in life, when it is not a sum or a page of history that is our difficulty or temptation, the habit of feeling the nearness of God’s presence and the responsibility to Him will surely prove a very great and real help.

Let us at least try to give our children something more than a name to hold by in their hours of darkness and trouble, and if people who ‘having eyes see not and having ears hear not,’ cry Idealism and Utopianism, let us take no heed, for all things are possible, even Utopia.

_London: Strangeways. Printers._

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

Contrast of the book cover has been adjusted for readability.

Typos corrected: repeated words printed on page 56, 70, and 80.

Superscripted text has been represented as “text^{superscripted}” in this edition.

Illustration captions were originally printed on a separate page from the illustration itself. They have been consolidated in this edition.

The locations of some illustrations have been moved to enhance readability. Page numbers in the list of illustrations remain unchanged.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation, and capitalization after punctuation, have been left unchanged.