and everywhere. In Swiss and German resorts enormously fat men come to you and explain to you that once they were the champions or the best sportsmen of their university – men who now cannot go upstairs. Fat men, between paroxysms of coughing,
[11] tell you of the goals they scored when they were extraordinary forwards. Unhappy sportsmen – you can meet them everywhere.
They are pitiable people. They can read only sport news, books are of no use to them. They never trained much their mind, and, apparently, have lost the ability to think. They don’t care for[12] art, and Nature only suggests to them the things they can no longer do. The mountain reminds them that once they could sleigh; the field makes them sad because they can no longer handle a golf-club; by the riverside they sit down and tell you of the salmon they caught; birds only remind them about guns; music raises visions of the local cricket-match and the local band. We are sorry for them, but their stories are not interesting. The man who has other interests in life beyond sport is deaf to them; while they do not want to talk to one another. They do not believe one another.
The foreigner is taking our sports; we hope he will be warned by our example. Football is gaining favour more and more throughout Europe. But yet the Frenchman prefers to play with his head, not with his legs. He would rather catch the ball upon his head than score a goal. He does not seem to care what happens with the ball. Anybody can have the ball; he has had his game and is happy.
They talk of introducing cricket into Belgium;[13] I shall certainly try to be present at the opening game. I am afraid that the Belgian[14] player will stop cricket balls with his heads. That the head is the proper thing with which to play ball appears to be in his blood. My head is round, he thinks, and hard, just like the ball itself; what part of the human body is better to meet and stop a ball?
Tennis is firmly established from St. Petersburg[15] to Bordeaux.[16] University professors, rising early in the morning, hire boys and practise it. But to the Frenchman, as yet, it is a game. He plays it in a happy, merry fashion, that is shocking to English eyes.
Your partner’s game astonishes you. His ball runs outside the field constantly. The joyous laughter of the spectators explain everything. Your partner was trying to hit a man in the next court who was busy with his shoe-lace. With his last ball he has succeeded. He has hit the man in the small of the back,