The old and young, rich and poor, feeble and herculean, all played it. Doctors advised it, children cried for it, and a fashionable journal devised the correct ping-pong costume for players. Great matches were played between the experts of various sections, and this sport, a game really for small children, after the fashion of battledore and shuttlecock, ran its course among young and old. Pictures of adult ping-pong champions were blazoned in the public print; even churchmen took it up. Public gardens had special ping-pong tables to relieve the stress. At last the people seized upon ping pong, and it became common. Then it was dropped like a dead fish. If some cyclonic disturbance had swept all the ping-pong balls into space, the disappearance could not have been more complete. Ping pong was put out of fashion. All this to the alien suggests something, a want of balance, a "youngness" perhaps. At the present time the old game of croquet is being revived under another name, and tennis is the vogue among many. Among the fashionable and wealthy men polo is the vogue, but among a few everything goes by fads for a few years. Every one will rush to see or play some game; but this interest soon dies out, and something new starts up. Such games as baseball and football, tennis and polo are, in a sense, in a class by themselves, but among the pastimes of the people a wide vogue belongs to fishing, and shooting wild fowl and large game. The former is universal, and the Americans are the most skilled anglers with artificial lures in the world, due to the abundance of game-fish, trout, and others, and the perfect Government care exercised to perfect the supply. As an illustration, each State considers hunting and fishing a valuable asset to attract those who will come and spend money. I was told by a Government official that the State of Maine reckoned its game at five million dollars per annum, which means that the sport is so good that sportsmen spend that amount there every year; but I fancy the amount is overestimated. The Government has perfect fish hatcheries, constantly supplying young fish to streams, while the business in anglers' supplies is immense. There are thousands of duck-shooting clubs in the United States. Men, or a body of men, rent or buy marshes, and keep the poor man out. Rich men acquire hundreds of acres, and make preserves. Possibly the sport of hunting wild fowl is the most characteristic of American sports. This also has its etiquette, its costumes, its club-houses, and its poker and high-balls. I know of one such club in which almost all the members are millionaires. A humorous paper stated that they used "gold shot."