A Calendar of Popular Outdoor Sports As Practised Among Persons of Breeding and Quality
Reading edition
LAWN TENNIS
Lawn tennis is one of those sports that are very popular among the onlookers. Ladies who can’t tell a tennis racket from any other noise, and gentlemen who never have been able to understand why the players stand on different sides of the net, are most enthusiastic tennis spectators, never missing any of the big matches. Oh, well, history has proved that there always has been a certain deadly fascination in watching one’s fellow creatures suffer needlessly.
INDOOR GOLF
Golf, that greatest of all reasons why men leave home, has become a delightful indoor sport. All butlers count as hazards, and footmen may not be removed from the course. Mr. Reginald Vere de Vere, one of our best known after-dinner golfers, is here portrayed demonstrating that fine shot he nearly made on the eleventh hole.
SUMMER BOATING
Are you one of those who have always believed that a punt is the lowest form of wit? If you are, you must change your views, for punting is bound to happen at all the smartest wet places. All our dowagers and dancing men are delighted with the sport. It’s so pleasant to fish from a punt,—some people do so love to angle for anything that seems to be in the social swim.
CROQUET
The clergy is going in for croquet more strenuously than ever before. It is indeed splendid exercise; there is no better way of developing the vocabulary. The reverend gentleman on the right really should not hit his adversary over the head with his mallet. He should know that whoever hits his opponent with a mallet loses his next turn. The correct thing to do is to hit him with one of the stakes.
