Classic Poem

MEN DELIGHT IN SPORTS AND GAMES

The baseball editor outdoes himself in describing a crucial match.
He depicts the " bleachers " crowded to suffocation,
The " Fans " shouting themselves hoarse
As a great double-play brings in two to score for the home-team;
An epic description follows.
When the nine innings are ended the crowd hastily disperses;
The long line of tram-cars packed to the running-boards creeps down the avenue.

Full reports come in telling of the latest championship of the golf-links,
A gigantically-contested tennis-match, between a Lord-Bishop and a President,
An enthusiastically-applauded game of that never-as-yet acclimated exotic,
The Englishman's favorite cricket, on the German-town grounds,
A fierce tussle between the Yale and Harvard football teams:
Stories of slugging are told; the strongest man is disabled,
Causing the balance of betting to be readjusted;
All the varied amusements of a great people, —
German picnics, Scotch curling-matches, Irish jig-dancing,
Are brought vividly with clever use of slang,
With laugh-compelling use of shrewd American wit,
Into the vast net of the newsmongers.

All the insignificant doings of the " Smart Set " are related:
The lavish entertainments of the Western millionaire
Who for the sake of his wife and his ambitious daughters
Has taken a Fifth Avenue mansion or a Newport villa for a season;
The gowns and jewels displayed at the Opera are fully described;
The flippant marriages uniting two colossal inheritances
Or a questionably-acquired fortune with a proud but impoverished family;
The malodorous details of a hastily procured Wyoming divorce;
The departure for Europe of an ill-bred and ignorant mine-owner
Eager to buy a title (albeit with wretchedness) for his heiress;
The names of those that patronize a charity entertainment —
Fill columns and columns, for " Society " also is Life.

The humorisThere finds field for his witticisms.
Münchhausen's exaggerations are thrown into the shade;
Comic poems with ingenious and acrobatic rimes are printed;
Crisp and epigrammatic dialogs embody cutting satire;
A jest is started in one " daily " and is quoted with accretion,
Becoming ever funnier until it crosses the continent.
Articles are learnedly written on American humor.
Its characteristics are analyzed and extracts are given
From Franklin and Artemus Ward and Lowell and dozens of others.
Journals are widely known by the wit of their editors.
Many a cause is won or lost by a rapier-thrust of Fun!