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Updated: July 20, 2025
You're plumb cultus, Mike." "Don't get sore," he grinned. "I got my chance to beat the game and I'm goin' to take it. I can't run foot-races, and win 'em, all my life. Some day I'll step in my beard and sprain my ankle. Ambition's a funny thing. I got the ambition to quit work. Besides, she you know she's got a dimple you could lay your finger in.
And there are donkey races, and tilting at a ring, and foot-races, and running in sacks. Nothing can be more picturesque than the scene, with its motley masqueraders, its crowds of spectators seated along the slopes, its little tents here and there, its races in the valley, and, above all, the glorious mountains looking down from the distance.
Robertson, from his "winning ways," had been appointed master of ceremonies, and he resorted to every device to placate and amuse the savage gentlemen. Dances, ball-plays, and foot-races were improvised, in which the young men of both races joined in good-natured rivalry; but, while attending to the festivities, Robertson did not forget the real object of the gathering.
But omitting to insist on the Spartan austerity, and especially on their gimnastic training for both sexes, and to take the milder methods of exercise in use among the Grecians, we find that the chace, that foot-races, and especially dancing, principally composed the amusement of the young ladies of that country; where, in the great days of Greece, no maxim ever more practically prevailed, than that sloth or inactivity was equally the parent of diseases of the body, as of vices of the mind.
There they ran foot-races in the clouds of dust whirled up from the dry ground, and threw the discus by the twisted thong as the young men of the hills do today, and the one who could reach the goal with the smallest number of throws was the winner, there, under the summer sun and in the biting wind of winter, half naked, and tough as wolves, the boys of Rome laboured to grow up and be Roman men.
The sports were of the sort characteristic of such a gathering wrestling and foot-races, target-shooting and bouts at cudgel-play and night-stick. Towards the middle of the afternoon, when the athletic prowess of the young men had been fully exploited, came the great spectacle, the bull-fight, and of this it will be necessary to speak somewhat particularly.
Foot-races followed, and, burning to distinguish himself also, Jack insisted on trying, though his mother warned him that the weak leg might be harmed, and he had his own doubts about it, as he was all out of practice. However, he took his place with a handkerchief tied round his head, red shirt and stockings, and his sleeves rolled up as if he meant business.
He then challenged an acquaintance to a game of quoits, and they closed the day with foot-races and other athletic exercises, at which there was no betting. He had walked ten miles to the muster field, and returned the same distance on foot to his father's house at Oak Hill, where he arrived a little after sunset."
In the afternoon there were foot-races, horse-races, and leaping competitions, and the dances about the May-pole were prolonged far into the night. The second day, early in the morning, the barriers were opened, and trials of skill with the blunt sword, jousting with the blunt lance at the quintain, and wrestling began, and continued almost till sunset.
The steward was Charles Kendall Adams, '61, while other members were Walter W. Perry and Byron M. Cutcheon of the class of 1861 and Martin L. D'Ooge of the class of 1862. Recreation was not a part of the earlier curriculum and athletics were unknown under that name, though feats of strength, jumping, lifting dumb-bells, the heavier the better, and foot-races, were common.
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