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.

This, then, is what cricket and boating, battledore and archery, shinney and skating, fishing, hunting, shooting, and baseball mean, namely, that there is a joyous spontaneity in human beings; and thus Nature, by means of the sporting world, by means of a great number of very imperfect, undignified, and sometimes quite disreputable mouthpieces, is perpetually striving to say something deserving of far nobler and clearer utterance; something which statesmen, lawgivers, preachers, and educators would do well to lay to heart.  My children, she would say, are not intended to be made working machines; they have capacities for joy, for spontaneous action, for doing some pleasant thing for the mere sake of doing it, without any regard to gain or profit, whether it be of money or anything else; and by obeying my dictates, they will find riches which they never sought for, will obtain gifts they never asked.