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  TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE

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  More detail can be found at the end of the book.




  [Illustration: HAND BOOK of SUMMER SPORTS

  PEDESTRIANISM
  RUNNING & JUMPING
  BICYCLING
  ARCHERY
  HARE & HOUNDS
  &c.

  BEADLE AND ADAMS--NEW YORK

  The American News Co., 39 & 41 Chambers St. N.Y.]




STANDARD BOOKS OF GAMES AND PASTIMES

BEADLE AND ADAMS, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK.


DIME BASE-BALL PLAYER FOR 1880.

Containing the League and National Club Averages for 1879, together
with the Model Games of the season. The prize winners in the National
Championship, and new chapters on Batting, Fielding, and Base
Running. Also, a New Scoring System, with record of the Metropolitan
Championship Games and Pacific League Averages. Edited by Henry
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HAND-BOOK OF CROQUET.

A Complete Guide to the Principles and Practice of the Game. This
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highly desirable that one uniform system should be generally adopted,
and hence the object of this work is to establish a recognized method
of playing the game.


DIME BOOK OF 100 GAMES.

Out-door and in-door SUMMER GAMES for Tourists and Families in the
Country, Picnics, etc., comprising 100 Games, Forfeits and Conundrums
for Childhood and Youth, Single and Married, Grave and Gay. A Pocket
Hand-book for the Summer Season.


CRICKET AND FOOT-BALL.

A desirable Cricketer's Companion, containing complete instructions
in the elements of Bowling, Batting and Fielding; also the Revised
Laws of the Game; Remarks on the Duties of Umpires; the Mary-le-Bone
Cricket Club Rules and Regulations; Bets, etc. By Henry Chadwick.


HAND-BOOK OF PEDESTRIANISM.

Giving the Rules for Training and Practice in Walking, Running,
Leaping, Vaulting, etc. Edited by Henry Chadwick.


YACHTING AND ROWING.

This volume will be found very complete as a guide to the conduct of
watercraft, and full of interesting information alike to the amateur
and the novice. The chapter referring to the great rowing-match
of the Oxford and Cambridge clubs on the Thames, will be found
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RIDING AND DRIVING.

A sure guide to correct Horsemanship, with complete directions
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GUIDE TO SWIMMING.

Comprising Advisory Instructions; Rules upon Entering the Water;
General Directions for Swimming; Diving: How to Come to the
Surface; Swimming on the Back; How to Swim in times of Danger;
Surf-bathing--How to Manage the Waves, the Tides, etc.; a Chapter for
the Ladies; a Specimen Female Swimming School; How to Manage Cases
of Drowning; Dr. Franklin's Code for Swimmers; etc. Illustrated. By
Capt. Philip Peterson.

==> For sale by all newsdealers; or sent, _post-paid_, to any
address, on receipt of price--TEN CENTS each.


BEADLE AND ADAMS, PUBLISHERS, 98 WILLIAM ST., N. Y.




  HANDBOOK

  OF

  SUMMER ATHLETIC SPORTS,

  COMPRISING:

  WALKING, RUNNING,

  JUMPING, HARE AND HOUNDS,

  BICYCLING, ARCHERY, ETC.

  _WITH COMPLETE AMERICAN AND ENGLISH
  ATHLETIC RULES._

  EDITED BY CAPT. FRED. WHITTAKER.

  NEW YORK:
  BEADLE AND ADAMS, PUBLISHERS,
  98 WILLIAM STREET.




  Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1880, by
  BEADLE AND ADAMS,
  In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.




  [Illustration: Spectators Seats.]




  CONTENTS.


                                    PAGE.

  PEDESTRIANISM,                        9

  WALKERS VS. RUNNERS,                 11

  SCIENTIFIC WALKING,                  14

  SCIENTIFIC RUNNING,                  19

  DRESS FOR PEDESTRIANS,               23

  TRAINING FOR A MATCH,                25

  LAYING OUT A TRACK,                  30

  CONDUCTING A MATCH,                  35

  RECORDS OF PEDESTRIANISM,            38

  JUMPING AND POLE-LEAPING,            43

  BICYCLING,                           46

  AMERICAN ATHLETIC RULES,             49

  ENGLISH ATHLETIC RULES,              56

  HARE AND HOUNDS,                     57

  ARCHERY,                             60




HANDBOOK

OF

SUMMER ATHLETIC SPORTS.




PEDESTRIANISM.


A wonderful increase of popularity has lately attended the art
of walking. The steady improvement made in speed and endurance
by professional and amateur walkers and the introduction of
international contests have brought this about within a few years.

When the firm of BEADLE AND ADAMS published their first Dime book
of Pedestrianism, the only American walker of reputation was Edward
Payson Weston. The record of professionals and amateurs had then
developed nothing greater than the performances of Captain Barclay of
England, who first did a thousand miles in a thousand hours. Weston's
famous walk from Portland to Chicago caused the only ripple of
excitement in the sporting world on the subject of walking from the
time of Barclay up to 1870.

Since that period, things have changed greatly. Weston's achievements
have inspired others, and those others have not only equaled but
excelled Weston on many occasions. The names of O'Leary, Rowell,
Corkey, and "Blower" Brown, all men born in the British Islands,
have been recorded above those of Weston at different times; but it
remains to the glory of the American pedestrian that in 1879 he beat
them all.

All these changes and ups and downs in pedestrianism for the last
ten years have made the old books obsolete, and the publishers of
the former Dime Book of Pedestrianism have determined to issue a new
edition, fully up to the times in all respects.

Besides practical instructions in walking, founded on the different
styles of noted professionals, we shall annex much matter never
before put in a handbook, concerning the preparation of tracks,
measurements, timing and scoring, for the information of that large
class of people living in country towns and villages, who have plenty
of walkers, but no experience in the conduct of matches, and no
opportunity to see how things are done in first class matches.

Every one can walk, but not every one can become a great walker. Any
young man of good health and strength can learn to walk five miles
in an hour, but the number of men who can walk twenty-five miles in
five hours is very small, and will always remain so. If we take the
population of any town or village we shall find that out of every
hundred young men from eighteen to twenty-five years of age, there
are about sixty more or less given to athletic sports, twenty who are
very enthusiastic about them, and six or eight who would make _good_
walkers, runners and general athletes. Of this six or eight, there
is generally one who is better than his fellows, and he becomes the
village champion in one sport or another.

This is about the true proportion--one per cent--of the young male
community, that is capable of being taken at random and converted
into good professional walkers. A general system of early physical
training would soon increase this proportion, but as we are never
likely to see any such system adopted we must be content with what we
can get. Out of those capable of becoming great walkers and striving
to become so, the proportion of second rate men is quite large.

There have been great long-distance walkers before, and probably will
be again; but a man of the peculiar constitution of Edward Payson
Weston is very seldom met with. Other men have, at times, beaten
him; but he has outstayed them all at last in endurance. No other
athlete on record has remained among contestants of the first-class
for so many years, for be it remembered that Weston's career as a
walker began on Thanksgiving Day, 1867, the day on which he arrived
at Chicago from Portland, and that so late as 1879, twelve years
after, he was able to do 550 miles in a week against the best men of
England, at a time when his latest rival, O'Leary, had utterly broken
down. Ten years after his first appearance on the track, he was able
to give O'Leary, in his prime, a tough battle, making 510 miles in
six days, and none of his antagonists can say as much for themselves.

The average duration of a great long-distance man, whether walker or
runner, seems to be about two years. It was in 1876 that O'Leary came
to the top of the wave, and in 1879 he went under. Weston alone keeps
on, apparently as fresh at forty as he was at twenty-six.

All this argues in Weston very great physical power and strictly
temperate habits, and he possesses both in a remarkable degree.

There, however, the praise ends. As a scientific walker, Weston
is inferior, not only to O'Leary, but even pitted against such
amateurs as Harry Armstrong, of Harlem, C. Bruce Gillie, of the
Scottish-American Club, or a dozen others we could name. When he
was in his best form, about 1874-5, it was the remark of an English
trainer, that Weston was "a mystery to him; that he didn't see how he
could walk at all on the bad system he used, and that any other man
would have broken down utterly in the attempt." Weston used to get
through his tasks, and does still, but only at the cost of terrible
fatigue, which he might have saved himself on a better system.

O'Leary, on the other hand, is an example of how the best training,
constitution and system may be neutralized and overthrown by
over-confidence and dissipation. As a scientific walker, O'Leary has
no equal, and were he of the same temperate habits as Weston, he
might still head the list as world's champion. As it is, the rows of
empty champagne bottles that were taken from his tent at Gilmore's,
when he broke down in the Rowell match, were the evidence and symbol
of his ruin.

It was not in his case, as he said in the _Spirit of the Times_,
that "runners can beat walkers." O'Leary, himself, in four or five
matches, had beaten all the time ever made by runners, save that of
"Blower" Brown; but the O'Leary of those days had succumbed to high
living, and a poor excuse was better than none.

Yet, the man's system was, and is, magnificent, and enabled him to do
respectable work against Hughes and Campana, when he really was not
fit to go at all.

Had he possessed Weston's temperate habits, or had Weston possessed
O'Leary's science as a walker, the result would have been a
pedestrian wonder that would have lasted many years longer than
O'Leary.




WALKERS vs. RUNNERS.


The success of Weston and O'Leary in their long-distance walks in
England surprised the Britons greatly. Up to the time of Weston's
appearance in that country, Englishmen had been accustomed to
consider themselves the best walkers in the world; but the two
Americans--the native and the naturalized--soon took the conceit out
of them. The best English long-distance walkers were Peter Crossland
and Henry Vaughan, who had both done excellent work in matches of
the kind then practiced in England. But the introduction of six-day
contests, first started by Weston, put these professionals on
unfamiliar ground, and they found that a man who could walk a hundred
miles in one day was not able to cope with these American wonders,
who could finish five hundred miles in six days. The Englishmen laid
their defeat to the right cause--unfamiliar methods; and Sir John
Astley, a rich sporting baronet, to put both parties on an equality,
introduced the six-day "go-as-you-please" match, soon to supersede
all others. It was thought that runners would have the advantage over
walkers in this match. Their backers claimed that by going over the
ground faster they would gain more time for rest, and so in the end
go further. The first Astley Belt match falsified all their data. In
the famous contest at Agricultural Hall, London, from March 18th to
March 23d, 1878, Daniel O'Leary covered 520 1-4 miles, in 139 hours
6 minutes 10 seconds, confining himself to walking after the first
fifty miles. He had against him the great English long-distance
runners and the best long-distance walker, Vaughan, all of whom he
defeated decisively. Vaughan stopped at 500 miles--a score he has
never since equaled--"Blower" Brown retired at 477, and "Corkey,"
who had things all his own way for the first three days, broke down
utterly on the fourth; while Hazael and Rowell were earlier satisfied
that they had no chance.

In the same year O'Leary defeated with ease John Hughes and Peter
Napoleon Campana, surnamed "Sport," both runners, and seemed to be
secure of holding the Astley belt for life. Indeed, had he not,
like most sporting men, been deceived by the exaggerated reports of
Campana's prowess, he might be champion to-day.

The reason for this statement is simple. Campana's Bridgeport record,
as it turned out from after investigation, was a deliberate fraud,
got up by some low sporting men, who probably did not at first dare
to hope for the success which it attained. They began by running
their man on a short track, and when that fraud was discovered made a
merit of having the course publicly remeasured by the city surveyor.
The more important part of the fraud was not discovered till after
"Sport's" ignominious defeat by O'Leary, and then only by the
confession of his Bridgeport scorers and time-keepers. It turned out
that they had been crediting him with laps never run, and that they
had employed men to personate him, late at nights, when he was really
asleep, these men running for him. By means of these fraudulent
representations they rolled up such a score for Campana that he was
credited with 521 miles in a six-day match.

O'Leary, who, besides his Hughes match, had been giving several
400-mile walks, knew that he was no longer in condition to walk
against a good man for the championship, and therefore made the match
one for money alone. Had he allowed the belt to be in the stakes
there is no doubt that he would have won it for the third and last
time, when he would have become its absolute possessor.

In the meantime, however, the runners in England had been improving
their style immensely, for in the second Astley match, beginning
Oct. 28th, and closing Nov. 2d, 1878, William Gentleman, (_alias_
"Corkey,") made 520 2-7 miles in 137 hours, 58 min., 20 sec.; thus
beating O'Leary's distance by a trifle, and his time by more than an
hour. This match it was that raised the spirits of Sir John Astley,
and induced him to send over Rowell (who made 470 miles in the same
match) to beat O'Leary. Sir John knew what he was about, and had kept
O'Leary in view all the year.

The scores of the American champion's matches with Hughes and
Campana, showed that the man was failing, and if so, Rowell was good
enough to beat him, as there was no other really formidable walker in
America; so Astley judged, and correctly, too.

The victory of Rowell over the American walkers caused an
instantaneous revulsion of public sentiment in favor of runners, a
revulsion artfully increased by O'Leary's widely-published dictum
that the runners were always "bound to beat the walkers." This,
however, was not by any means proven at that time. The real truth was
that champagne, not Rowell, beat O'Leary; and Rowell's record in the
race was twenty miles short of the champion's best walking record.
The other competitors in the match were simply not first-class men.

The cause of the runners has, however, received a fresh impetus since
Rowell's victory by the still more remarkable feat of "Blower" Brown
(always a "good man") who in the third Astley belt match, April
22d-27th, 1879, made the amazing distance of 542 miles in 140 hours.

Finally the veteran Weston beat even Brown's record by the
superlative score of 550 miles over the same track, opposed to Brown
