All ages join in this sport, the small boys erecting diminutive poles in the fields around the villages, where they imitate their elders with toy bows and arrows, while men of seventy or eighty take their turn with beardless youths in the prize competitions. While I was visiting in the Borinage two years ago the uncle of my hostess shouldered his two-metre bow and started off to a "meet" despite his eighty-seven years. What is more, his hand had lost none of its strength and firmness, and his eyes none of their keenness, for twice while I was present he brought down one of the "birds," and I later learned that he had won one of the principal prizes. Only the year before he had been crowned "King" at one such contest, and the first time he ever won that coveted honour was when he was sixteen--or seventy-one years before. I doubt whether there is any athletic game in the world of which the devotees can point to a longer record of success. This fine old athlete had two brothers older than himself alive at the time, the combined ages of the three aggregating two hundred and eighty years. One of them, aged ninety-four, recently expressed some anxiety as to what would become of him in the event of the death of the daughter with whom he was living. "What will I do if Amèlie should die?" he asked of one of his other daughters. "Why, papa, then you would come and live with me," she replied, adding with a flash of characteristic Belgian humour, "and when I am dead you'll go to live with Fèlicienne" (a grand-daughter still in her 'teens). As this provided safely for his future for at least another fifty years, the old gentleman was greatly relieved, feeling perhaps that if he survived Fèlicienne her children would by that time be old enough to take care of him. While archery is everywhere the dominating pastime of the working class it is by no means the only form of popular amusement. The bicycle has not yet gone out of vogue in Belgium, and societies exist in hundreds of cities and communes for the encouragement of bicycle racing. The day of our arrival in the village where Tante Rosa spread for us the banquet mentioned in the second chapter, we were so fortunate as to witness the final sprint of a twenty-five kilometre race. A score of contestants had pedalled ten times over a course consisting for the most part of roadways paved with ragged cobble-stones, the rest being dirt roads filled with mud puddles owing to a recent rain. The riders, as they rushed by, were literally covered with mud and had evidently struggled hard to gain one of the five prizes which aggregated, as we afterwards learned, the munificent sum of eighty francs, sixteen dollars, of which the winner received thirty--six dollars!