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It
is not the boys who make me feel a touch of sadness; their approaching
elevation to the dignity of manhood will raise them on the whole in the
scale of humanity; it is the older spectators whose aspect has in it
something affecting. The shaky old gentleman, who played in the days
when it was decidedly less dangerous to stand up to bowling than to a
cannon-ball, and who now hobbles about on rheumatic joints, by the help
of a stick; the corpulent elder, who rowed when boats had gangways down
their middle, and did not require as delicate a balance as an acrobat's
at the top of a living pyramid--these are the persons whom I cannot see
without an occasional sigh. They are really conscious that they have
lost something which they can never regain; or, if they momentarily
forget it, it is even more forcibly impressed upon the spectators. To
see a respectable old gentleman of sixty, weighing some fifteen stone,
suddenly forget a third of his weight and two-thirds of his years, and
attempt to caper like a boy, is indeed a startling phenomenon.


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