I cannot tell how much physical weakness, how much moral evil we have batted, and bowled, and shinnied away from our door; but I do know that we have batted and bowled away indolence, and listlessness, and doing nothing, which I believe is the Devil's greatest engine; and I also know that the enthusiasm of the boys in these games never dies out, their enjoyment never flags, for these games supply the want of the boys' natures, and keep their thoughts from straying to forbidden ground.
Now these games are the very thing which that portion of mankind called the sporting world, have always loved and cherished. They have infused the love of these games into the very bones of Englishmen, and who knows how much good England owes to them! Let us then overlook for a while the religious world, the commercial world, the literary world, for they do not contain what we seek now, and let us look at this poor sister world, a world which seldom finds itself in such good company.
Each of these worlds has its work; the one we now have to do with, the sporting world, is a world probably as much decried, and with as much reason, as any. But see how pertinaciously this world will persist in coming up to the surface wherever a community of men may be. See how rigorously the Puritans tried to put down, or rather _squeeze_ this heinous tendency out of Human Nature! But they did not succeed, though goodness knows, they tried hard enough. Yet it has come up again, and lo! it is now as vigorous as ever. Friends! I am finding fault with the Puritans in the very midst of their descendants. But what greater compliment could I pay these old Puritans than this? for their greatest glory is, that they left to their descendants the precious legacy of free thought! and so deeply imbedded is this in the very bones of the race, that they will gladly hear a stranger criticize and even condemn, a portion of the Puritan mind: knowing full well, that the fabric which they builded on the shores of this Continent is sufficient to bear witness to the real manhood that was in them. But what was the reason of their failure? Simply they were trying to drive out Nature with a pitchfork, and she of course will perpetually keep coming back. So we say of this world, the sporting world, so liable to abuse, and so unsparingly abused, what is true of all the worlds, and that is, that it would be well for mankind, if they were to bestow a little thought upon the demands of this, as well as of the other worlds; and not be content to ignore wholly a thing the value of which they do not understand;--how the sporting world has witnessed, does witness, and will forever witness, for a fact in Human Nature, which no amount of pressure will ever squeeze out of Human Nature, and that is, the necessity which human beings feel for amusement, and for open air exercise, not exercise merely, but hearty, joyous, blood-stirring exercise, with a good amount of pleasant emulation in it.