ENGAGEMENTS BROKEN BY SPORT

New Zealand Mail, 24 December 1902, Page 24

ENGAGEMENTS BROKEN BY SPORT

WHEN LOVERS HAVE GIVEN Vjt EACH OTHER BECAUSE ONr, OF THEM WAS TOO FOND OF OUTDOOR RECREATION. The engaged man or woman who allows the love of sport and pastime to become a passion, can only do so at the risk of weakening the bonds of the more tender emotions. There are thousands of young men who divide their affections about equally between their sweethearts and a favourite game, but theirs is a precarious position.

A half-share of attention and devotion may suit the dreamy, lackadaisical lass, who has no thought for the morrow, but the practical girl, with her own and her possible husband’s future at heart, far from being content wii

this, would regard it as an evil and ominous sign.

In the same way the young man who is looking for a wife worthy of the name will hesitate before trusting his comfort and happiness to one whose chief qualifications may happen to be an enthusiasm for golf or ping-pong. It is not, however, from motives of prudence in this connection that engagements are always broken off. There are sometimes reasons which are not quite so readily apparent. For instance, a young fellow wlro is an adept at football, or a clever eweketer, may, In the first flush of an ardent love affair, allow bis passion for athletics to subside for a time and take a secondary place All goes well for a few months, perhaps, the course of true love runs smoothly, hut when the season comes round again the chances are that the love of the old sport may revive and re-assert itself. This recrudescence g.f a neglected or repressed passion is 'almost sure to he heralded, or accompanied, by a distinct change in the lover’s manner and conversation.

The latter, instead of being merely flavoured with occasional references to the favoured pastime, becomes overladen with an eternal jargon of goals and cups, or centuries and wickets, as the case may bo, till, at last, it is not to be wondered at that the little blind god is put to ignominious flight. A friend of the writer’s who had become engaged to a .very attractive young lady soon after having- received an accident on the football field, agreed that with the placing of the betrothal ring on her finger his connection with the game should cease.

Being a valuable playeir, however, his loss was a great blow to the club of which he had been a member, and thus it was that during the following season, on the occasion of a match of crucial importance being played, he was urgently pressed to lend his powerful assistance. ' •-

Anxiety not to appear churlish, or disoblige his friends, caused him to reserve his decision until he had consulted his fiancee. That lady, however, was so indignant to think that he had not given an immediate and emphatic refusal, instead of throwing the onus upon her (she had brothers in the same

dub), that it led .to a violent scene between them, which resulted in the engagement being abruptly broken off. The fault may have been fairly evenly divided in the foregoing case, but in the following instance it was rather more one-sided.

A yonmg couple who had been engaged for about two years suddenly parted company through a quarrel over the lady’s refusal to relinquish what she considered the joys of cycling. Her lover, who had been smitten with, hut recovered from, the same mania a few. years before, had little sympathy with his adored' one’s liking for the pleasures of wheeling, and listened hut coldly to her vivacious stories of interesting club runs and almost■ record spins. Things reached a climax when at last he told her, kindly but firmly that she would have to ohose between him and her all-engrossing pastime. She, perhaps woman-like, resented his interference with her liberty of action as cruel and unwarrantable, and she, therefore, still cycles, while he pursues another divinity, whose tastes are much-more in concert with his own.

An equally disappointing result it was which ended an interesting engagement in high life last season, chiefly owing to the uncompromising cnaracter of the lady concerned. In defiance of the strongly expressed wishes of her intended husband she insisted on pursuing her favourite sport to an absurd extent. She was a goou shot and fond of carrying the gun, to which her fiancee, possessed of somewhat puritanical opinions, would not have raised miuch objection had it not been for the fact that when on slaughter bent his sweetheart invariably arrayed herself in the striking costume of “rational dress.”

Without wishing to discount the health-giving value of athletics, it is "well to remember that comparatively few persons, of either sex, indulge in them for hygienic reasons only. When any form of recreation lias acquired such a hold on one as to he powerful enough to induce him or her to break an engagement, it is about time for it to he given up altogether.