Sporting notions of present days and past

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PUTNEY AND THE CLUBS 193
when certain of them were taken away. Of
course the common-sense view presented itself to
make a per contra—viz., reflecting on the splendid
proportion of veteran members left, as fine a set
of seasoned warriors as you could wish to put
forward for purposes of refuting the anti-athletic
school. They could, I guess, do as good a day's
work, with age allowance, as the young 'uns, and
take their own part, too, on level terms except for
pace.
Their successors will, I fancy, never be asked
to train as hard as did the first Londoners, who in
their second year went to Henley and walked off
with the Stewards, the Diamonds, and the Grand
Challenge Cup, beating the Oxford University
Boat Club, and in 1859 defeated the Cambridge
University Boat Club in a heat, and the Oxford
University Boat Club afterwards. While Mr
James Layton, who became president in 186o and
remained so till his death in 1875, was in office
some of what I venture to call the barbarities of
training disappeared. I never recollect the prize-
fighters' preparation hurting anybody much.
Still, it carried a deal of unnecessary—shall we
say ?—torture. I am sure that some of these
ancient methods were mistaken, too, because they
took too much out of men. Half the pugilists
were overdone in their preparation through being
given too much long, slow, dragging work,
instead of sharp, bustling exercise, a far better
means of removing internal fat than the other.
This is not to give preference to slack training
over the honest hard sort, but more by way of
pleading for moderation. In one particular I am
sure about the former style being wrong—viz., in
cutting an athlete's drink down, not letting him
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