MUSCLE.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume 4, Issue 336, 7 October 1879, Page 3

MUSCLE.

"Chispa" in the Ashburton Mail is responsible for the following:—- ---" Let us cultivate muscle ! Much of it. I went two nights ago to look up a young friend of mine, who is a great believer in muscle. He is dead nuts on cricket, rides like a Centaur, and on a suitable piece of equinity will negotiate the most frowning conglomeration of posts and rails that ever scared the most skeery steed and the shakiest seat. I have seen. him illustrate for five solid hours all the beauties that can be displayed in what he almost piously calls " the poetry of motion." He spent those five solid hours, on a frozen loch, and though he shed several quarts of blood from his finely chiselled nose after an attempt at •'the stroke. Adonis," rose up with a started scalp after an unsuccessful effort to cut the figure eight backwards, and several times threatened the entirety of the ice in not very graceful endeavors to imitate with his 12-stone person the graceful gliding of the curling stone- —he always came up smiling, with the remark ready on his lips.that these were only a few of the taxes levied by Art upon those of her votaries who pursued her on her highest platform of grace and beauty. When I arrived at Bicep Villa (so my friend designates his shanty on the East belt), he answered my knock with a muffled sort of " Come in." Thus invited I made my way into his bedroom before I found him in proper person. He was standing over the washstand getting clear of a copious overflow Of blood from a swollen nose. A small flat-iron he sometimes uses as an anvil when he goes in for amateur silver-smithing, lay on the nape of his neck to expedite by its coldness the cessation of the crimson flow. The cessation happened after a while, and he told me what was the matter. He'd been up to the sample rooms where in the " Olympic arena " he had met a smarter man than himself for once in his life, and that jellied nose and generally knocked about face were the result of a bout with the gloves. He ran over a list of amiable young mcii who had all left the rooms considerably " marked " ,but as they will doubtless tell certain fair maids a

'different yarn I'll surcease, andsaye awkward consequences. After a cut of raw beef had been spread" over the mauled nose and the left eye, myr friend settled down to talk. He didn't like the subject of boxing: hc-'d had plenty of that for. a .time.-—full up—so he got on to footballing. But talking is not a pleasant occupation when a clout on the eye has jammed the lids together, and another clout has swelled the nose to the dimensions of an Altringham turnip. So he put into my hands the following letter he had received. Heave outplace and date arid proceed : —Dear H——-,

I was quarter back in the match. It was the stiffest I ever played. In one scrimmage X—got his eye very nearly gouged out by a spill in a gravel patch. S-—— was jerked out of the crowd right into the air, and the little chap came down right on Tom F -'s shoulder ;he was within an ace of getting his back broken, and didn't play any more. Big C , making a prime run, was collared and thrown. I don't know if they have got the boulder out between his ribs yet, but he growls as much as if they hadn't. I want a foot square of new skin put on to my face, shoulders, and knees. M got a nasty kick on the shin that won't heal for a month, besides a number of little ones as legacies. P walks with a limp. He says the Governor would be in a mortal rage if he were to tell him how queer he felt about the hip joint. Little A— : — got a nasty twist in.one of the • ankles, and he is going lame now. . . ." That's about plenty of the letter to show what a manly game is football. How well it would have suited the Chocktaw Indians.