Sporting notions of present days and past

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190 SPORTING NOTIONS
who could would pitch his tent in or near Putney
so as to be handy for work on the river.
All that sort of intimate association with
boating and boat-racing and attachment to the
locale for residence in practice seems to me to
have died out, or most of it. And I expect that
were the Putney of to-day—by Putney I mean
to include the place, its immediate surround-
ings and associations—to be ten times more
radically altered than it has been, from an outlying
riparian townlet to a crowded suburb, the difference
would not be felt by this generation half as much
as the change I spoke of by the school who used
to take their pleasure in and about boat-racing's
headquarters, but are now pretty long in the
tooth.
Please understand I do not blame anyone.
Times change; if you do not move with them,
you get left. Daily, inclination grows stronger
to treat everything, and I might almost say i
everyone, on a business basis without sentiment
or consideration beyond dealing on a money-
down principle. (Of course cash, absolutely in
money or value, may be only promised, not fairly
handed over, that is an incident of a bargain void
of any tinge of imagination.) The thing or person
has a price for being taken up as required, used
while usage is desirable, and dropped when not
wanted longer. As I believe it, the greater
proportion of the old school went into sport
because Nature had projected their career in that
direction. Having enlisted, they served their
time. Put on the retired list, they remained
faithful to their colours out of instinct simply.
Now we work on short service, very short service
lines. The idea of obligation to carry on with what