Page:Lynch Williams--The girl and the game.djvu/208

 "There's the Fifth Avenue Hotel," he said to himself. "That's where the four-in-hands used to start from for the game, with the horns blowing and colors flying." His heart gave a bound of homesickness for the old, bright days that seemed long ago.

"But what good did my athletics ever do me," he asked himself again, "except give me a large appetite, which I can't earn money enough to satisfy?"

In fact, athletics had developed his physical powers, taught him to control his temper, to obey, to command, to rely upon himself, to work in concert with others, besides bringing him a good deal of prominence and popularity, pleasant things to a young man. But none of this is worth thanking athletics for when you are hungry and have but half a dollar between you and destitution in a great, noisy city, where every one else seems to have something to do and somewhere to go, and to care absolutely nothing what becomes of the one they brush past and idly glance at.

"What a fool I was," he muttered, "to