To be sure, in the last century the sport wave had not yet reached our continent from England. There were as yet no stadiums where a hundred thousand people went wild with joy when one boxer hit another on the chin. The newspapers did not yet send reporters to fill columns with Homeric rapture about a hockey game. Fights, athletic clubs, and heavyweight records were still regarded in our time as a thing of the outer city, and butchers and porters really made up their audience; at best the noble and more aristocratic sport of racing drew the so-called “good society” several times a year to the
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