of little weight, and the handicapping is exclusively by time-classes.  Records of every race are kept by two national associations.  Horses that have never trotted a mile in less than two minutes and forty seconds are in one class; those that have never beaten 2.35 in another; those that have never beaten 2.30 in a third; and so on down to 2.05, which has been beaten but a dozen times.  Races are always run in heats, and the winner must win three heats.  With a dozen entries (or even six or eight, the more usual number) a race may thus occupy an entire afternoon, and require many heats before a decision is reached.  Betting is common at every meeting, but is not so prominent as at running tracks.

The record for fast trotting is held at present by Mr. Morris Jones’ mare “Alix,” which trotted a mile in two minutes three and three-quarters seconds at Galesburg in 1894.  Turfmen confidently expect that a mile will soon be trotted in two minutes.  The two-minute mark was attained in 1897 by a pacing horse.

Sailing is tremendously popular at all American seaside resorts; and lolling over the ropes of a “cat-boat” is another form of active exercise that finds innumerable votaries.  Rowing is probably practised in the older States with as much zest as in Great Britain, and the fresh-water facilities are perhaps better.  Except as a means to an end, however, this mechanical form of sport has never appealed to me.  The more nearly a man can approximate to a triple-expansion engine the better oarsman he is; no machine can be imagined that could play cricket, golf, or tennis.

The recent development of golf—­perhaps the finest of all games—­both in England and America might give rise to a whole series of reflections on the curious vicissitudes of games and the mysterious reasons of their development.  Golf has been played universally in Scotland for hundreds of years, right under the noses of Englishmen; yet it is just about thirty years ago that (except Blackheath) the first golf-club was established south of the Tweed, and the present craze for it is of the most recent origin (1885 or so).  Yet of the eight hundred golf-clubs of the United Kingdom about four hundred are in England.  The Scots of Canada have played golf for many years, but the practice of the game in the United States may be dated from the establishment of the St. Andrew’s Club at Yonkers in 1888.  Since then the game has been taken up with considerable enthusiasm at many centres, and it is estimated that there are now at least forty thousand American golfers.  There is, perhaps, no game that requires more patience to acquire satisfactorily than golf, and the preliminary steps cannot be gobbled.  It is therefore doubtful whether the game will ever become extensively popular in a country with so much nervous electricity in the air.  I heartily wish that this half-prophecy may prove utterly mistaken, for no better relief to overcharged nerves and wearied brains has ever been devised than