Chapter VIII: Front Matter (8)

[_This department of_ ~Outing~ _is devoted to answers to
correspondents seeking information on subjects appertaining to all
sports._]

_Fox-terrier, Brooklyn._--There is no great difficulty in removing warts from a dog’s eyelids. Take a forceps and a sharp penknife; then raise the wart with the forceps and cut out the wart, afterwards touching the wound with nitrate of silver. The other question is more difficult to answer, for, without seeing the dog, it is hard to say whether he is suffering from distemper or not. Your safest course is to consult a good veterinary surgeon.

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_Transatlantic, Washington, D. C._--All kinds of cures have been suggested for sea-sickness, and in cocaine the doctors seemed to think they had found the long-sought relief. Nothing, however, to the best of our experience, can equal good champagne and cracked ice as a preventive. The _Perrier-Jouet_ of Messrs. Du Vivier & Co., 49 Broad Street, New York, and the _Great Western Champagne_, sold by H. B. Kirk & Co. (see page xv.), are wines we can heartily recommend.

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_Druid, Cleveland, O._--There is to be an International University boat-race next year between England and America. The details are, we believe, not yet settled; but it is much to be hoped that the winner of the Yale-Harvard race will meet the winner of the Oxford-Cambridge race.

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_Amphibious, Long Branch._--You will find that the unpleasant condition of your skin and head, which you describe, is undoubtedly the result of too much salt-water bathing. This is best remedied by taking fresh-water baths, and using a soap of good hygienic properties, such as Packer’s Tar Soap. You can obtain this at most druggists’, or if not, from the Packer Mfg. Co.

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_Sportsman, Baltimore, Md._--We think you will find that the prejudice against machine-loaded cartridges has entirely vanished from the public mind. This has been in a great measure brought about by the excellence of the Peters cartridge. It is agreed now that for pattern, penetration, and absence of recoil this cartridge is unexcelled, while, whatever may be the chemical constituents of the Peters wad, no cartridge loaded with black powder leaves the barrel so clean and unfouled. In every respect it compares more than favorably with the hand-loaded crimped shell.

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_Sprinter, Detroit, Mich._--C. H. Sherrill, New Haven, Conn., on June 15, 1888, made a record of 15s. for 150 yards, and on the same day, 25 4-5s. for 250 yards. These are, we believe, the latest amateur records for those distances. The Secretary of the Chicago Amateur Athletic Association is George L. Wilson, 241 Lake Street.

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_Horse-master, Charleston, S. C._--The breast-strap is seldom used in England in place of the collar. It is in some measure no doubt due to the fact that English people use much heavier vehicles than are in vogue in America. With at all a heavy weight, the breast-strap confines the shoulders.

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_Tennis Enthusiast, Boston, Mass._--(1) H. W. Slocum and Howard A. Taylor are graduates of the rival Universities. Mr. Slocum graduated from Yale in the class of ’83, and Mr. Taylor from Harvard in ’85. (2) Mr. Taylor is the junior by some three years. (3) Mr. Taylor plays with his left hand.

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_G. B. T., Fellowcraft Club._--Fishes Eddy is on the New York, Ontario & western Railway, 154 miles from New York, with two trains each way daily. It has one small hotel. It is located on the East Branch of the Delaware. The country is wild, mountainous, and abounds in game both large and small--deer, black bear, partridge and woodcock. The trout fishing in the small streams and lakes is excellent. Guides can be had for about $3.00 per day.

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_A. L. M., Boston, Mass._--The recent high commendations given to Californian brandy by the medical journals would seem to point to its decided superiority to French products. The brand which we should specially recommend to your notice is the Royal Grape Brandy, furnished by the California Vintage Company, 21 Park Place, N. Y.

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_Bird Hunter, Washington, D. C._--Audubon explains the “drumming” of the cock pheasant as follows. After telling how the bird struts and plumes itself on some decayed trunk, he continues: “The bird draws the whole of its feathers close to its body and, stretching itself out, beats its sides with its wings in the manner of the domestic cock, but more loudly, and with such rapidity of motion, after a few of the first strokes, as to cause a tremor in the air, not unlike the rumbling of thunder.” Indeed, this seems to be the only method vouchsafed by nature for the cock to summon his mate in the early spring, during the period of incubation.

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_Amateur Photographer, Albany, N. Y._--You can procure the outfit you require from the Rochester Optical Company, who are perfectly reliable dealers.

PRINCETON HEARD FROM.

~The~ following communication from W. L. Hodge, of Princeton, is given a place in ~Outing~ with a view to making as perfect as possible the data of college baseball. No intention to do Princeton an injustice was intended by Mr. Chadwick, whose interest in the progress of the game with which his name is so honorably associated is now as great as it was in years gone by when the game and the veteran were younger. ~Outing~ is ever ready to correct an error as well as to vindicate the truth.

_To the Editor of_ ~Outing~:

~Dear Sir~,--I have just this moment finished reading an
article in the August number of ~Outing~ entitled “Baseball
in the Colleges,” by Henry Chadwick, and beg leave to correct
several mistakes which he makes, and by which he does Princeton
gross injustice. At the close of the article he gives a summary of
the championship matches played between 1880-88, inclusive, and
says Harvard won the championship in 1882. Now, if he will refer
to his tabulated summary, he will find that instead of Harvard
winning the championship in that year, she was third in the race,
winning five and losing five games, while, if I remember rightly,
Princeton and Yale tied for the championship, and Yale won the tie
game played in New Haven. Yale has never lost the championship but
once, and that was in 1885. Again, he says that Princeton was third
on the list during the whole period from 1880 to 1888, inclusive.
Now, if Mr. Chadwick will refer to his summary once more, he will
see that Harvard has held that honorable position quite as often
as Princeton, for in 1888 Princeton was a close second, tried for
second place in 1881, and won the second place in 1882 and 1883,
Harvard being a bad third. In 1885 Princeton and Yale tried for
second place, and Princeton won the “play-off” game at New Haven by
the score of 15 to 13. I simply mention these facts to do Princeton
justice.

Yours,
~W. L. Hodge~, Princeton, ’88.

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~As~ we go to press we hear with great pleasure of the victory of our lawn tennis correspondent, Mr. V. G. Hall with his partner Mr. O. S. Campbell in the double championship tournament at Staten Island.

OUR PREMIUM.

=~Outing~ readers, not regular subscribers to the magazine, will find it to their advantage to consult the advertising pages xx. and xxiv. Subscribers to other publications should consult our Clubbing Rates on p. xx.=

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=During the approaching Australian Baseball Tour (see advertisement page), Mr. Harry Palmer, the noted baseball writer, will act as the special correspondent of OUTING. Mr. Palmer will accompany the party throughout the trip, from October 15, the date of the start, and will regularly send full and interesting accounts, to appear in the different issues of OUTING. We feel sure that our readers will take a keen interest in these articles. In OUTING for November will appear an article by him giving the intended program of the teams as they proceed on their long westward journey, besides many interesting details of the personnel of the party.=

Painting by J. Carter Beard. Engraved by W. H. F. Lyouns.

WASHINGTON AND HIS HOUNDS.]

~Outing.~

~Vol. XIII.~ NOVEMBER, 1888. ~No. 2.~

OUTDOOR LIFE OF THE PRESIDENTS.

BY JOHN P. FOLEY.

I. ~George Washington.~

The great cities have not yet given the country a President. From Washington to Cleveland the chief magistrates have all come from great Southern plantations, lonely Western farms, rural towns or villages, scattered up and down the Republic. The early Virginia Presidents were, as a rule, more fortunate in the circumstances of their birth than any of their successors. Washington’s infant eyes opened amid scenes of rare natural beauty. The home of his parents was on the banks of the Potomac, one hundred miles below Mount Vernon. It was a large, comfortable cottage, filled with all the luxuries which a wealthy planter of that period could command. From its lawn could be seen a wide expanse of the majestic river, ten miles broad at that point, and on the opposite shore the forest-crowned hills and plains of Maryland. Thomas Jefferson was born on the handsome estate of his father, in Albemarle County, part of which he afterward inherited. Madison’s father, too, was a large landed proprietor, the owner of slaves, and the possessor of a fortune sufficient to gratify his ambition. James Monroe was equally fortunate. His father lived in a fair Virginia home, surrounded by all the semi-feudal splendor of that distant slave era. To complete the group of the Revolutionary Presidents the name of John Adams must be added. In his youth his prospects in life were as cold and hard as his native New England hills. His father was poor, and had to strain every pecuniary nerve to send him to Harvard College. When he left that institution he was compelled to earn his living as a teacher. The story of the deeds of these five men in the cabinet, the field, and the halls of legislature has been written by many pens and told in many tongues. Their fame is one of the precious inheritances of the Republic whose foundations they so materially helped to lay, and to whose magnificent structure of popular government they contributed perhaps more than any other five leaders and statesmen of the Revolution. But it is with their private home life, and that of their successors, we are now concerned.

Washington is the most stately figure in our history. It requires an effort of the imagination to think of him except, as it were, in full-dress. He is ever the commander-in-chief, mounted on a spirited war-horse; serene in the hour of victory; undaunted in adversity; full of hope and confidence when all others are in gloom and despair. Again, we love to picture him as the majestic President, ceremonious as the most imperial of monarchs, provoking the harsh criticism of enemies by what they termed his mimicry of foreign potentates--of the English court and king whose political fetters he had shattered. And, still again, he towers up in our imagination as the American Cincinnatus, laying down the sword and the sceptre, retiring from the pomp and power to which he had been so long accustomed, to his picturesque home in the Virginia woods, leaving behind him an example of lofty patriotism without a parallel in all human annals. But there was another Washington whom we seldom see except in stray glimpses, when the curtain rises before the scene is fully set, or when the side wings hitch and halt in their grooves. His biographers tell us that his military propensities were early developed; that when a boy he was in the habit of forming his school companions into military companies, who paraded, marched, and fought mimic battles, and that he showed his genius for command by being always the leader of one of the rival parties. He was fond of athletic amusements; of running, jumping, tossing heavy bars, and other feats of agility and strength. “Indeed,” says Mr. Sparks, “it is well known that these practices were continued by him after he had arrived at the age of mature life.”

This story is told of him while he was commander-in-chief of the Continental armies: Colonel Timothy Pickering, to whom Washington was very much attached, had a negro body-servant named “Primus.” Washington visited Pickering’s quarters one day, and found him absent.

“It does not matter,” said General Washington to Primus, “I am greatly in need of exercise, and you must help me to get some before your master returns.”

Under Washington’s directions the negro tied a rope to a neighboring tree, about breast high, and Primus was ordered to stand at some distance and hold it horizontally extended. Washington ran forward and backward for some time, jumping over the rope as he came and went, until he expressed himself satisfied with the exercise. It is said that he frequently visited Primus and amused himself in this primitive fashion.

He learned fencing when he was quite young; his teacher being an old soldier who had seen service with his brother in the Indies. His stone-throwing feats across the Rappahannock, over the Palisades, and to the top of the Natural Bridge in Virginia, are mentioned by nearly all his biographers. Charles W. Peale, the artist, tells us that when he was at Mount Vernon in 1772, painting Washington’s picture, he saw him toss a bar very much farther than the most athletic and expert of a number of young men who were, on one occasion, testing their strength in that way. He was then forty years old, and proudly remarked, “You perceive, young gentlemen, that my arm yet retains some portion of the vigor of my early days.” He was a good wrestler, and many stories of his prowess in this respect are told.

General Washington was a splendid horseman. There was no animal he could not master, and he never lost his seat in the saddle. The well-known hatchet dialogue between his father and himself is suspected to have no better foundation than the imagination of the Rev. Mr. Weems. The following incident in his young life, and the subsequent interview between his mother and himself, rest on more substantial historical data: Lady Washington owned a fine span of gray horses, in which she took very great pride. One of them had never been broken to the saddle. It entered into the heads of some young friends of Washington to give the colt his first lesson in this particular branch of his education. The animal resisted their efforts, and would not allow any one of them to mount him. George, although one of the youngest of the party, managed to pacify the terrified creature and to bestride him. Then came a battle royal between horse and boy. All the animal’s efforts to free himself from his rider were vain, and he started to run. Washington gave him free rein. The horse never stopped till he fell prostrate beneath his young master. George, as may be imagined, was very much alarmed at what had occurred, but he immediately told his mother. “I forgive you,” she replied, “because you have had the courage to tell me the truth at once.”

Washington loved a good horse, and long before the war of the Revolution his blooded stock was not inferior to any in the country. Fox-hunting was one of his favorite amusements, and at the “meet” few of his planter friends and neighbors were better mounted than he was. All his hunting paraphernalia was imported from England. His costume was made by the best tailors in London. It consisted of a blue cloth coat, scarlet waistcoat, buckskin breeches, with velvet cap, and admirably became his splendid form and figure. He usually rode a large, fiery animal of great endurance, called “Blueskin.” The names of some of his other horses were “Chinkling,” “Valiant,” “Ajax,” and “Magnolia.” “Will Lee,” his huntsman, was famous through the province as a daring rider. “Mounted on Chinkling,” we are told, “this fearless horseman would rush through brake and tangled wood in a style at which modern huntsmen would stand aghast.” Washington’s kennel was an excellent one. When a mere boy he rode to the hounds with Lord Fairfax, who brought a pack from England, the only one, it is said, in the country at the time. Washington, therefore, knew what a good pack should be, and “it was his pride,” says Lossing, “to have it so critically drafted as to speed and bottom that, in running, if one leading dog should lose the scent another was at hand immediately to receive it, and thus, when in full cry, to use a racing phrase ‘you might cover the pack with a blanket.’” Here are the names of some of the dogs: “Vulcan,” “Ringwood,” “Singer,” “Truelove,” “Music,” “Sweetlips,” “Forester” and “Rockwood.” Lafayette sent Washington some hounds after the close of the war, but he had then given up hunting. Previous to that he hunted in the season two or three times a week. He is candid enough to admit, in his correspondence and diary, that the foxes nearly always escaped, but he philosophically consoled himself with the reflection that the main end in view--excitement and recreation--had been achieved.

During the Presidency he sometimes drove six horses to his carriage in New York and Philadelphia. His servants wore livery, for which Tom Paine bitterly attacked him, and he was often accompanied by outriders. George W. Parke Custis, his adopted son, in his “Recollections and Private Memoirs of Washington,” gives an interesting account of the management of the stables when the seat of government was at Philadelphia. “The President’s stables,” he says, “were under the direction of ‘German Tom,’ and the grooming of the white chargers will rather surprise the moderns. The night before the horses were expected to be ridden they were covered entirely over with a paste, of which whiting was the principal component part; then the animals were swathed in bed-cloths and left to sleep upon clean straw. In the morning the composition had become hard, and was well rubbed in, and curried and brushed, which process gave to the coats a beautiful glossy and satin-like appearance. The hoofs were then blackened and polished, the mouths washed, the teeth picked and cleaned, and the leopard-skin housings being properly adjusted, the white chargers were led forth for service.” When Washington rode out he was always accompanied by his servant “Bishop.” This was his favorite exercise in New York and Philadelphia while he was President. He sometimes walked, however, and around the Battery, then a fashionable promenade in New York, and now given over almost entirely to immigrants from all quarters of the world, was the direction he most frequently took in this city. He frequently drove and rode what was then called the “fourteen miles around.” This route was up the old King’s Bridge road to McGowan’s Pass, at 108th Street, thence across on a line with the Harlem River to Bloomingdale, and down on the west side of the island to the city.

Fowling was another favorite amusement of the first President. His own estates and the country around them abounded in game of all kinds. A century and a half ago, and, we suppose, long before that time, the waters of the Chesapeake were the resort, as they are now, of the incomparable canvas-back and other wild-duck. Tradition has it that Washington was a good shot. He knew the favorite feeding-places of the finest flocks, and he could steal a march on them as secretly as, in after years, it was his wont to surprise the fortified camp lines of the British redcoats. Although Washington loved to follow his own game-birds and bring them down when he could, he rigorously prohibited other people from breaking in on his preserves. His principal biographer has preserved a story from oblivion which illustrates his sentiments in this respect together with his personal courage and resolution. A lawless person was in the habit of crossing the Potomac opposite Mount Vernon in a canoe, and, concealing himself in the woods, filling his game-bag at Washington’s expense. Repeated warnings to desist were sent him, but, poacher-like, he was a believer in the doctrine that game is common property and belongs to him who can capture it. Washington was determined to stop the raids upon his birds, and the poacher’s end at last came. Hearing a shot one day, and suspecting who had fired it, Washington mounted his horse and rode in the direction of the sound. The poacher discovered his approach, and had time to enter his canoe and push a few yards from the banks before the master of Mount Vernon appeared in view. When Washington, with anger in his eye, became visible, the poacher raised his gun, cocked it, and took deliberate aim. Washington did not betray the slightest sign of alarm or timidity. He strode into the water, seized the canoe and pulled it ashore. Disarming his antagonist, Washington gave him so severe a chastisement that he never again ran the risk of meeting a similar reception. Washington in the latter part of his life was something of a fisherman. There is an entry in one of his diaries, while the Federal Convention was in session in Philadelphia, telling of a fishing party near Valley Forge. While President, he also drew in a codfish with his own hand on the fishing banks off Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

No one of the presidents lived so much in the open air as Washington. With the exception of the eight years in the Presidency, he was almost constantly in the field, the woods, the wilderness, or the farm. His first occupation was that of a surveyor, upon which he entered when he was sixteen years of age. During his last summer at school he amused himself by surveying the grounds around the school-house. The adjoining plantations then became the field of his experiments, and their angles and boundaries were all marked down by him with the most minute detail. At this time he thought of going to sea. His brother Lawrence obtained a midshipman’s warrant for him, but his mother objected, and an admiral, perhaps, was lost to the navy of the English king whose most famous general he was destined to defeat. He then received a commission to survey the western lands of Lord Fairfax. This led him across the first range of the Alleghany Mountains into the wilderness. He was accompanied on this expedition by George, the eldest son of William Fairfax. They endured much hardship and privation, but the trip, in all probability, was the means of laying the basis of the splendid physical health which Washington enjoyed all through life. The country was almost uninhabited. The dwellings, mere huts at the best, were few and far apart. Storms very often swept away their tents, and frequently they were compelled to sleep with no roof except the skies. Three years, the severe winter months excepted, were spent in this work, which, like everything Washington undertook, was well executed. His success led to promotion. He received an appointment as official surveyor, which enabled him to make his entries in the county offices. The lands surveyed lay on the south bank of the Potomac, seventy miles above the present Harper’s Ferry. Washington did not foresee that in a short time he would have an opportunity to turn to very great advantage in the public service the knowledge he was then acquiring of this comparatively unknown region. But, nevertheless, the French-Indian war, in which he bore so conspicuous a part, was not far distant. In 1751, the western boundaries of the colony of Virginia were so harassed by the Indians that measures had to be adopted for their protection. The country was divided into districts, to one of which Washington was appointed inspector with the rank of major. He was now a soldier. In 1755, when he was only twenty-three years of age, the command of the Virginia troops was given to him. He resigned his commission in 1758 and the following year he was married.

Washington was barely twenty-seven years old when this interesting event took place, and when he may be said to have settled down to lead the life of a country gentleman. He was in every sense of the term what is called a favorite of fortune. Rich, honored, loved, married to a beautiful woman of distinguished family and large wealth, the possessor of a splendid estate, which he had just inherited, of handsome person and superb health, with more fame than falls to the share of most young men at his period of life, a keen relish for the good things of the world with the means to obtain and the capacity to enjoy them--the prospect before him was, indeed, an alluring one. Mount Vernon was one of the loveliest homes in the country and the landscape around it unrivaled on the continent. Through its hospitable gates came the governors and leading men of old colonial Virginia as the friends and guests of its master. Gay hunting parties, with hounds and horns to rouse the fox in his hill-side cover, gathered on its spacious lawns. Stately dames talked over the latest society gossip from the colonial capitals and across the seas on its broad verandas and under its overarching trees. To speak of more material things, there was a small army of slaves to employ, to clothe, to feed, to watch and to attend, for Washington was one of the most humane of masters. Thousands of broad acres awaited cultivation and improvement, while flocks and herds innumerable claimed protection from winter storm and summer heat. Into this manifold life, with all its cares and responsibilities, Washington entered with the keenest zest. His ambition in a public way seemed to have been satisfied with the fame he had won in the French war. But, whatever may have been his thoughts or aspirations, he set himself to the task of cultivating and adorning his property. Mount Vernon consisted of five farms, each one of which had its own appropriate set of laborers under the direction of an overseer. Washington visited them all daily and gave instructions for the day following. He was one of the most methodical of men, rising at a regular hour in the morning, and retiring at a fixed time at night. He loved his stock, and paid particular attention to their comfort. Prize cattle shows and exhibitions had not then come into fashion. If they had existed at the time it is very certain that the name of the young soldier-planter would have headed the lists of exhibitors, and that he would have filled Mount Vernon with cups and premiums testifying to his pre-eminence as a breeder. He had an attachment even for the lower animals, and never destroyed life when there was no necessity for it. A gentleman, who at one time lived in his family as secretary, tells us that, as he was walking one day with Washington in his grounds, a snake of a harmless species started up in front of them. The secretary lifted his heel to crush the reptile, when Washington caught his arm and exclaimed, “Stay, sir! Is there not room enough in this world for you and that harmless little reptile? Remember that life is all--everything to the creature--and cannot be unnecessarily taken without indirectly impugning its Creator, who bestowed it to be enjoyed with its appropriate pleasures through its own natural term of existence.”

He was the model farmer of his time. Though not a student in the ordinary acceptation of the term, he read a good deal on agricultural and kindred subjects, investigated the nature and character of his soils, and grew his crops on a scientific basis. Fond of flowers and trees, he was never weary of ornamenting his estate with the choicest specimens, native and foreign, that he could find. Life for him had flowed along in this tranquil way during a period of fifteen years when the first mutterings of the Revolutionary storm were borne to Mount Vernon. He was as eager to do battle for the rights of his country as any gentleman within the boundaries of the thirteen colonies. The war came, and he was chosen commander-in-chief. Before he departed for the scene of operations in New England, he gave his superintendent minute instructions in regard to the management of his property while he was absent. During the progress of the long struggle, he corresponded with him as frequently as possible, and an immense number of letters, written from the camp and his ever-shifting headquarters, many of them before and immediately after important engagements, attest the deep interest he took in the smallest matter connected with his beloved home. The manager is told what crops to sow in different fields; the precise spots on which young trees of different families should be planted, and what old and decaying ones should be cut down. We can see in these curious and interesting letters how deeply he was attached to every animate, and indeed inanimate, object on his estate, and how he yearned to be restored to them. Only once in the long eight years did he visit Mount Vernon. He was then on his way to lay siege to Cornwallis at Yorktown, and finally receive the sword of the best English general in America. To describe his outdoor life while in the army would be to re-tell the story of the Revolution.

At last the end came, and the foremost commander of his age, the liberator of his country, was again a private citizen and a country gentleman. Mount Vernon had suffered severely from his long absence, for his instructions had been imperfectly carried out. The soil was in many places exhausted by successive crops of tobacco, while the necessity for extensive repairs confronted him on every hand. He was fifty-one years of age. The work of restoring his estate to its former splendid condition was at once begun. He plunged into agriculture with all the ardor of his youthful days. In a letter to Lafayette, he describes his feelings at this time. “At length,” he writes, “I am become a private citizen on the banks of the Potomac, and, under the shade of my own fig-tree, free from the excitement of the camp and the busy scenes of public life, I am solacing myself with those tranquil enjoyments of which the soldier, who is ever in pursuit of fame, the statesman whose watchful days and sleepless nights are spent in devising schemes to promote the welfare of his own, perhaps the ruin of other countries (as if this globe were insufficient for us all), and the courtier, who is always watching the countenance of his prince in hopes of catching a gracious smile, can have very little conception.” Troops of friends and admirers visited him in his retirement and were entertained in a most hospitable manner.

In the autumn he began on a systematic plan to renovate his worn-out fields; each parcel of land was numbered, and the precise crops to be planted in it were set down several years in advance. This method proved so successful that he adhered to it during the remainder of his life. He next turned his attention to his grounds. Early in the spring he began with the lawn. To it he transferred the choicest trees in his forests, setting them out with evergreens and flowering shrubs intermingled in such a manner as to produce the most pleasing effect. The removal and replanting of each one received his personal attention, and from day to day he watched them with the greatest solicitude, keeping in his diary the record of their life or death. Next came the replenishing of his orchards and gardens. Fruit-trees of rare and valuable varieties were procured at whatever cost. Flowering shrubs were planted in abundance--in fact, nothing that could add to the beauty and decoration of Mount Vernon was left undone. The pruning-knife now took the place of the sword, and he never tired of wandering among his plants, cutting away useless branches and shoots which marred their beauty or hurt their growth. There was no law on the statute book against foreign contract labor, and he imported skilful gardeners to enable him to carry out his plans of improvement. His habits were most regular. He was out of bed with the sun, and the hours until breakfast were passed in his study, writing letters or reading. Breakfast over, his horse was ready at the door to take him on the round of his farms. If his guests wished to accompany him, or to make excursions into the surrounding country, horses for them also were led out. Returning from his fields, he again shut himself up in his study, where he remained until three o’clock, when dinner was announced. The remainder of the day and evening was given to his guests until ten o’clock, when he retired.

The repose of this fascinating life was not destined to be of long duration. With the close of the war the young confederacy found itself confronted with new difficulties and dangers. To meet them, and bring order out of the political chaos, there assembled that body of patriotic and illustrious men who, as the result of their deliberations, gave the world the constitution of the United States. Washington presided over their deliberations, and, in due time, his election to the Presidency followed. It was hard to be compelled again to leave Mount Vernon and to abandon all his cherished plans for its improvement. This entry is found in his diary in the summer of 1789: “At ten o’clock I bade adieu to Mount Vernon, to private life and to domestic felicity, and with a mind oppressed with more anxious and painful emotions than I have words to express, set out for New York, having in company Mr. Thomson and Colonel Humphrey; with the best dispositions to render service to my country in obedience to its call, but with less hope of answering its expectations.” He was loath to leave home for many private reasons, chief among which was his desire to pursue the system he had matured for the improvement of his estate. Since the war he had procured from England the best works on agriculture, and was impatient to put his ideas and theories into practical operation. Now all had to be given up, at least for four years, when, he hoped, the term of his second servitude in public life would come to an end. But what was to be done in the meantime? The seat of government was hundreds of miles away, and roads next to impassable except at certain seasons of the year, made communications tedious and difficult. He did the best thing possible, namely, to appoint a manager and leave with him instructions in writing for his guidance.

These instructions throw a strong light on the character of Washington, a light for which we might search in vain among the many volumes of his State papers, public addresses and private correspondence. His dearest interests were involved in the management of his property, and he naturally wrote with a freedom, directness and emphasis concerning it which he scarcely could have employed on any other occasion. In these simple memoranda, made when he was on the eve of assuming the highest honor his country could confer--an honor all the greater because of the transcendent ability and character it was supposed the position demanded--we can see, that while the world was ringing with the fame of his achievements, his innermost thoughts were occupied with those beloved fields on which he had lavished so much care. He intended that everything should run along in his absence precisely as if he were present. There is a military ring in the following sentences which reveals the old commander-in-chief: “One thing I cannot forbear to put in strong terms. It is that whenever I order a thing to be done it must be done; or a reason given at the time, or as soon as the impracticability can be discovered why it cannot be done, which will produce a countermand or a change. But it is not for the person receiving the order to suspend or dispense with its execution; and, after it has been supposed to have gone into effect, to be told that nothing has been done in it; that it _will_ be done or that it could not be done--either of these is unpleasant and disagreeable to me, having been all my life accustomed to regularity and punctuality. Nothing but system and method are required to accomplish any reasonable requests.” Due notice that he will expect every man to do his duty at Mount Vernon while he is in New York is given as follows: “To request that my people must be at work as soon as it is light; work until it is dark, and be diligent while they are at it, can hardly be necessary, because the propriety of it must strike every manager who attends to my interests, or regards his own character, and he, on reflecting, must be convinced that lost labor is never to be regained.” His plan, or system, was very comprehensive. It contained instructions what to plant and where to plant it, not only for the year but for many years in advance. Every one of the five overseers was required to make a minute weekly report concerning the operations on the farm he had in charge. This was given to the manager and by him sent to the President. The work performed by the laborers and their condition, whether ill or well, were to be noted. The slightest incident or accident connected with everything on the estate--the stock, the crops, the trees, the fences, the farming implements--was to be made known to him. And, no matter how public business pressed, time and opportunity were found or made, during all the eight years of the Presidency, to consider and attend to the affairs of Mount Vernon. Each weekly report was closely examined and answered, sometimes at great length.

This extract from one of his communications shows how closely he watched his slaves and how well he was acquainted with them personally: “What sort of sickness is Dick’s that he should have been confined with it for weeks? And what kind of sickness is Betty Davis’s that it should have a similar effect upon her? If pretended ailments without apparent causes or visible effects will screen her from work, I shall get no service out of her, for a more lazy, deceitful and impudent huzzy is not to be found in the United States than she is.” In another letter, he refers to a young negro whom he wished to have trained as a house-servant. “Put him in the house,” he says, “give him good clothes, so as to make him self-respecting, and a stout horn comb. Make him comb his hair, or wool, so that it will grow long.”

What a many-sided character Washington possessed! No President ever held the helm of state more firmly than he did during those eight years while the young Republic was beginning its career as a nation. The ablest men in our history as a people were then in public life, but he was the master of them all. He was supreme in a cabinet containing two men of such vast acquirements as Hamilton and Jefferson, and he ruled them as completely as he governed “Dick” and “impudent Betty Davis” down at Mount Vernon.

The summer months were usually spent on his estate, though not invariably. During the Presidency, he traveled a good deal in different parts of the country--Long Island, the Eastern States, and down South and out West. No man of his time probably knew the geography and topography of the country better than he did. As we have pointed out, the French-Indian war led him across the Alleghanies, and he twice again visited that region, less known then almost than the middle of Africa is to-day. He explored the middle of New York with De Witt Clinton, penetrated to the very centre of the Dismal Swamp, and took the field once more when the Whisky Insurrection broke out.

After the expiration of his second term, he again returned to the banks of the Potomac and resumed the occupations he laid down eight years before. Writing to a friend soon after his arrival, he tells him that he “began his daily course with the rising of the sun and first made preparations for the business of the day. By the time I have accomplished these matters breakfast is ready. This being over, I mount my horse and ride around my farms, which employs me till it is time to dress for dinner, at which I rarely miss to see some strange faces, come, as they say, out of respect for me.” The farm was over eight thousand acres in extent, and these rides averaged twelve or fifteen miles in length. This description of Washington at the time was given by young Custis to a gentleman who had inquired for him: “You will meet with an old gentleman riding alone, in plain drab clothes, a broad-brimmed white hat, a hickory switch in his hand and carrying an umbrella with a long staff which is attached to his saddle-bow. That person, sir, is General Washington.” Another call to duty came in the threatened war with France. Washington was made lieutenant-general, but the storm soon blew over.

He was now sixty-eight years old, and the end of all was coming. He rode out as usual one morning in December, caught cold, and died in a few days. The trees he planted in his youth bend above his grave on the banks of the Potomac.

THE PROGRESS OF ATHLETISM.

BY C. TURNER.

Athletism is one of the distinctive forces of the nineteenth century, and of all the forces, acting upon the social, moral and physical life of the century, it is probably destined to be the most permanent in its effects. No impulse has had a swifter or a wider scope. While other forces of aggregation have welded together peoples having a common ethnological origin into a nation, such as Italy, and consolidated independent states into a system, such as Germany, it has been the function of athletics to unite in a common interest the whole (Anglo-Saxon) world. America and Australasia have felt its influence, and passed under its discipline, in no less degree than the scattered colonies and dependencies of “Greater Britain.” Remarkable as it may at first sound, it is true, that no fact to-day “flashed round the girdle of the globe” would excite so widespread a curiosity, or so much personal interest, as that an amateur athlete had succeeded in covering one hundred yards of space in one second less than the recorded time of the great classic contests of the century.

In the United Kingdom, Ministries may come and Ministries may go, Governments may wax and wane; such news will interest few but the inhabitants of Great Britain. In America contests of deep interest may rage round a Presidential Election and rend public opinion, but the very knowledge of the contest will be confined largely to the American continent. The fiercest controversies in science and religion may rise and subside, the whole current of ecclesiastical thought may change, whilst the “Tracts for the Times” will remain a mere phrase to the millions who are keenly alive to the more cosmopolitan questions involved in athletism. On the remote sheep-farms of Australia, in the cattle ranches of Texas, on the pampas of South America, amongst the snows of the Himalayas, round the kraal fires of Southern Africa and in the busy marts of China and Japan, there will be auditors who will gather with keener interest to hear of the battles of pluck and endurance by the Isis and the Cam than would be displayed about any contest for dominion among the powers of the world. In the island home of its birth, and the land of its most earnest adoption, no system of news, in its ingathering and dispersion, is so regular, systematic and universal, or so anxiously scanned as the sports of the Queen’s Club Grounds, or the progress of the baseball nines of New York, Boston or Chicago. It puts into operation a system as perfect and as rapid as if the fate of nations hung in the balance.

Whence is all this? Partly, it may be, that the subject dealt with and the competitors involved touch the most abiding and deep-seated instincts of our common nature, carrying us back, by their very mention, to those halcyon days when we too marked the scudding form or joined in the thrilling race.

“Be it a weakness, it deserves some praise;
We love the play-place of our early days,
The scene is touching, and the heart is stone
That feels not at that sight, and feels at none,”

sang one of our early English poets, and again:

“The pleasing spectacle at once excites
Such recollections of our own delights,
That, viewing it, we seem almost t’ obtain
Our innocent, sweet simple years again.”

But how came the natural aptitude and expertness of the Saxon in outdoor sports to be so totally obliterated, as undoubtedly it was, up to within the past forty years? That England, above all, with her old Viking blood, should have lain torpid and effeminate; that that “hard gray weather,” which, as Kingsley says, “makes hard Englishmen,” should have become barren in results, is one of the most puzzling facts of a now happily remote past. It was not ever thus; the early poets teem with allusions to training and skill in manly sports and outdoor pastimes, but the records of the eighteenth century as surely point to their almost universal eclipse. Read Cowper’s “Timepiece,” written in 1783, and more especially his “Tirocinium; or, a Review of the Schools,” written in the following year. What a picture do they present! The tavern and the play-house, cards and the race-course, license and riot, fill the terrible picture of the youth of the period, the product of the school and college. Study languished, emulation slept, and virtue fled, is his uncontested verdict.

“See womanhood despised and manhood shamed,
With infamy too nauseous to be named;
Fops at all corners, ladylike in mien,
Civeted fellows, smelt ere they are seen.
Else coarse and rude in manners, and their tongue
On fire with curses and with nonsense hung,
Now flush’d with drunkenness, now with excess pale,
Their breath a sample of last night’s regale,
Designed by nature wise, but self-made fools;
All these, and more like these, were bred at schools.”

It certainly is a picture which, thank God! could not be painted now. Nor could it be written of the well-to-do youth of the nation, as was written by South and quoted by Dr. Johnson in his Dictionary in illustration of the word “athletick”--“strong of body, vigorous, robust,” that “seldom shall we see in rich families that athletick soundness and vigor of constitution which is seen in cottages where nature is cook and necessity caterer.” The youth of “rich families” have now, happily become the very pink of the “strong of body, vigorous, robust,” and a practical refutation of such an opinion, in every English-speaking land.

It was fitting, though singular, that the revival of outdoor sports, which received its first check from the narrow fanaticism and repressive bitterness of the puritanical period, that saw Beelzebub in the quarter-staff and Satan in a foot-race, should have received its first impulse into new life largely from the disciples of “Muscular Christianity,” of whom Canon Kingsley may perhaps be taken as the type. Yet so it was; they fanned into life the embers in which still burnt the hidden fire, and rekindled the dormant passion for rural sports into more than its old vigor with a new purity and with a force which, ere half a century had passed, was to restore athletism to its legitimate sphere throughout the Anglo-Saxon world.

Many other things combined to help the movement. Not the least of these was the dawning belief that Juvenal’s oft quoted “_mens sana in corpore sano_,” contained a fallacy, and that the healthy body must precede and render possible the healthy mind. This doctrine, in “the forties,” was feebly struggling for recognition, but is now recognized as lying at the very root of social and moral regeneration. England’s danger in the period of the Crimean war, tended to turn the minds of men to the seriousness of our national position, and to the advantages of systematic training to resist hardship. The volunteer movement, with its platoon exercises and its outdoor drills, often on the old “Butts Green,” which the wisdom of our forefathers had provided for their day and generation, drew further marked attention to physical training. All this tended to create in the rising generation an inclination to return to our older, more natural, and more healthful custom of outdoor life.

Whatever were the causes, and whether this enumeration of them be either accurate or complete, certain it is that in the early “fifties” athletism took a new and marked departure. As was natural, that departure received its concrete form in the two ancient English universities “where students most do congregate.” In athletics it can with truth be said, “the boy is father of the man.”

For all the higher interests of athletism this was fortunate. In those two centres the young plant was at least in a soil with materials for its growth, and in an atmosphere where its grosser forms could scarce take root, and where that parasite, the professional blackleg, could certainly not develop. Thus it has transpired that those concomitant evils which at one time threatened even the existence of cricket have been kept from the field of amateur athletics. The watchful eye, the timely warning, the friendly aid of authority, which, without crushing, silently regulated the mode and conduct of these sports, has enabled them to spread a beneficent and not a corrupting influence. That there were evils, inherent, latent, and which might have become powerful, all will admit; that they were surely and deeply rooted and ineradicable was the fear of many; that they showed a tendency at first to develop is a matter of record, but that they no longer affect athletism, where it is conducted by gentlemen for gentlemen, is equally certain and satisfactory.

That the development of athletism, regulated and purified as it soon became, was a distinct advance on the antecedent pastimes is perfectly clear. Athletics soon obtained a recognition and a warm welcome from the public. Let those who are old enough cast back their minds thirty years and recall the scenes of brutality which filled the columns of public newspapers, the very existence of which is now almost forgotten. Turn even to the _Times_, and it will be found that in that exclusive journal and great reflex of the age, “prize fighting” holds quite a significant space. But the work unostentatiously begun in the universities, and spreading to the schools, was preparing a public which would become interested in the more scientific development of the human frame for higher and nobler purposes.

To Oxford belongs the honor of initiation in the Athletic Club of Exeter College founded in 1850. Five years later the sister university followed Oxford’s example; but, as is her habit, though slower to the influence of innovation than Oxford, when once she has accepted an idea, she makes more rapid progress. St. John’s College led the van; Emmanuel, and one by one the rest, followed. So rapid, indeed, was the development, that within two years the whole of the seventeen colleges and halls were ready for a “federation,” and in 1857 the first intercollegiate sports were held. Three years after, Oxford, too, was ready for its extended sphere, its “United States” constitution.