ENDURANCE CLUB-SWINGING

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 6451, 24 February 1908, Page 6

ENDURANCE CLUB-SWINGING

TOM BURROWS IN MELBOURNE. ANOTHER WORLD’S RECORD. As I write, says the "Referee's” Melbourne representative in communicating with his paper at 11.45 p.m. on Thursday night, the 6th inst,, Tom Burrows is steadily plugging along with his clubewingiug contract at the Opera House, and getting nearer and nearer to the end of the 61 hours 35 minutes’ task he has set himself to perform. He has still 24 hours to go, and is cheerful. "Only twenty-four hours more,” says his trainer t) him. ‘'Yes,” says Tom, "and in teu hours there will only b© fourteen more left.” Ho smiles, and a bystander says "What phenomenal courage!” "A LINGERING ILLNESS.” Club-swinging on long lease terms cannot. be described as active athletics; it partakes more of the nature of a lingering illness. But the man seems to have grown chronic in his work, and swings away as cheerfully as the bedridden invalid lice and reflects that ho will be up and about again probably at the end of the summer after next, or a year later at most. Swing, swing swing; the clubs wav© and gyrate w'ith a continuity that makes one giddy, and the spectator walks away after gazing at the man for half an hour, wandering how long he could watch it without becoming imbecile. But a kind of well'd fascination makes him go back-to have another look; the eternal serpentine movement, like a perfect-ly-balanced piece of metal machinery, produces a click in the spectator’s brain, and' he walks off to* say© his reason. The rhythmic lunacy of it causes bis temple© to throb, and he closes his eyes to shut out the spectacle. But in the darkness behind the closed eyelids he: can see those fanciful clubs clawing round in- an unending and distracting revolution, till the haunted man in sheer despair opens his eyes again to relieve the dizziness.