each a golden cup from the magnanimous hands of a maiden chose to the
service, either on account of her peerless outline, the dignified
position of her House, or (should these incentives be obviously
wanting,) because the chief ones of her family are in the habit of
contributing unstintingly to the equipment of the triumphal band.
There is also another kind of strife, differing in its essentials only
so far that all who engage therein are provided with a curved staff,
with which they may dexterously draw their antagonists beyond the
limits, or, should they fail to defend themselves adequately, break
the smaller bones of their ankles. But this form of encounter, despite
the use of these weapons, is really less fatal than the other, for it
is not a permissible act to club an antagonist resentfully about the
head with the staff, nor yet even to thrust it rigidly against his
middle body. From this moderation the public countenance extended to
the curved-pole game is contemptibly meagre when viewed by the side of
the overwhelming multitudes which pour along every channel in order to
witness a more than usually desperate trial of the hurl-headlong
variety (the sight, indeed, being as attractive to these pale,
blood-thirsty foreigners as an unusually large execution is with us),
and as a consequence the former is little reputed save among maidens,
the feeble, and those of timorous instincts.

Thus positioned, regarding a knowledge of their outside amusements, it
has always been one of the most prominent ambitions of this person's
strategy to avoid being drawn into any encounter. At the same time,
the thought that the maidens of the household here (of whom there are
several, all so attractively proportioned that to compare them in a
spirit of definite preference would be distastefully presumptuous to
this person,) should regard me as one lacking in a sufficient display
of violence was not fragrant to my sense of refinement; so that when