DOES SPORT KILL LOVEMAKING.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LI, Issue 190, 1 August 1908, Page 3

DOES SPORT KILL LOVEMAKING.

Judging by the majority of novels dealing with modern life, love-making, as our ancestors understood it, is a lost art. Such love scenes as there are are telegraphic in their brevity, not to say crudity. "Oh, 1 say let's get married,'" says the hero. "Oh, all right, but not i before I've won the Upper Sloeum (.101l Championship," says the heroine, or words to that effect. And on the whole the novel of modern life truly reflects that life from whieli, to come to the point, love-making is rapidly being eliminated by the excessive devotion to sport and' athletics of both sexes. This passion for sport is Cupid's most dangerous enemy. Some sports, as, for i example, hunting the carted deer, arc 'altogether brutalising, and must therefor-.) kill any capacity for tender emotion that may originally have existed ill the callous and cruel breasts of thoic who follow such horrid travesties ot sport. But, mercifully, the majority of tile young men and maidens of the' nation have neither the means nor, it is to bo hoped, the inclination to follow the more cruel field of sports. Cricket, football, lawn tennis, golf, hockey, .badminton, are the chief rn-

creations of our young people. Can il. then, be truthfully said, that these innocent sports, which involve no loss ot furred or feathered life, are inimical -.<■ love-maikng? I think it can. An eminent scientist recently start! ■» the world by declaring that' what ;.- known as "calf love" is due to a specific change in the brain. Be that as it may, there can be no doubt that low! arises in the brain. An idiot cannot fa'i in love, and, generally speaking, the lin-u----and more active the brain, the greater its possessor's capacity for feeling-and expressing the highest emotion of which the human mind is capable. But without going into medical questions, brain-power, brain-sensibility, whilst often independent of the muscular power of tlie individual, docs vary directly with his nervous energy. 'And, I whilst exercise in roason develops nervous energy, in excess it destroys it. Where great masses of muscle are built up, they have to be fed, and they feed on nervous energy, thus starving and eventually atrophying the brain. The modem youth, the modern girl, are fast losing the capacity to love and | be loved by their excessive devotion to athletics.

Is this an exaggerated picture? I think not. Tho next time you are at a dance, observe the young people, and see how listless they are. Tired out by a long day's athletics, they have nothing to say to each other; there is not na idea in their hungry, bloodless brains; not a spark of emotion in their dulled and inanimate souls.

It is said that in regard to admiration and flirtation middle-aged women have a ranch better time of it nowadays than young girls, while equally middle-aged men are more in demand than young ones.

Is not the explanation of this phenomenon to be found in the fact that the young men and the young girls of the present day are no good to flirt with? They haven't the energy for the game. Tlio middle-aged, on tho other hand, forced by advancing years to abandon violent exercises, begin to store up that nervous energy, which is the mainspring of love-making. Then the athletic devotee is often—indeed, usually—a one-ideaed person. Heor she can only talk on one topic—their pet sport or game—and, confronted with anyone who does not share their passion for golf or what not, they are tonguetied and incapable of receiving or exchanging intelligent impressions.

Over-athleticism, therefore, tends to make the victim stupid and unpleasing, and necessarily unlikely to be courted. Let any feminine reader reflect who is the most charming among her admirers, and I shall be. very much surprised if she finds that he is a great athlete; and conversely let the male reader pass in review the various objects of his adoration, and probably ho will find that the one who stiro him most is the nonathletic maiden.

Sport, at least, excessive sport, doss kill love-making, because it dulls the emotions and destroys those finer sensibilities which distinguish us from the brute creation.