Underdog

“ We see all too clearly the blood and sweat, the craft and dunning and blind luck, the raw cruelty and stupidity, the shortcomings of heart and hand, the mad abuse of victory. Strands of meanness and cowardice are everywhere shot through the warp of lofty and generous daring. There are failures bitter and shameful side by side with feats of triumphant prowess. Of those who venture in the contest some achieve success; others strive feebly and fail ignobly. ”

“ It was hard fighting to get back; but here we are again, ready to denounce the leader, and support his opponents. For the moment we are victorious, but who shall prophesy what may be looming in the distant ages? The hour may come—
12 NOON.—It has! And now that we have again taken possession, we must say we have never had so elegant a quarrel. The shillelaghs were flinging about all over the place, cracking crowns in all directions, and the scrimmages were just magnificent! It was an elegant row entirely! But now to work. Our noble leader deserves his triumph, and his opponents are nowhere. ”

“ And if he be defeated, he wins the grim joy of fighting; if he lose the race, he, at least, has had a run. Better to work and fail, than to sleep one's life away.
So, walk up, walk up, walk up. Walk up, ladies and gentlemen! walk up boys and girls! Show your skill and try your strength; brave your luck, and prove your pluck. Walk up! The show is never closed, and the game is always going. The only genuine sport in all the fair, gentlemen—highly respectable, and strictly moral—patronised by the nobility, clergy, and gentry. ”

“ What guerdon must be paid, what thanks offered, to him who lacks the prize of courage? Who has ever garlanded with ivy the weakling in War, or decked him with a conqueror's wage? Valour wins the prize, not sloth, and failure lacks renown. For one is followed by triumph and honour, the other by an unsightly life or by a stagnant end. I, who know not which way the issue of this duel inclines, dare not boldly anticipate that as a reward, of which I know not whether it be rightly mine. For one whose victory is doubtful may not seize the assured reward of the victor. ”

“ Not merely do you hide your tactics, but you do your best to make others believe that you are on the brink of ruin as soon as you are sure of winning the game. In short, you dissemble, do you not? You lie to win four or five louis d'or. What would you think of a player so generous as to proclaim that he held a hand full of trumps? ”

“ RIVALRY.—To compete for good is famous—such as little boys rivalling one another in a race up the Ladder of Learning—that is exercise of the mind. Here we have a picture of country boys exercising their strength—climbing up a pole covered with grease, for a prize of food for the body. The boy that wins the leg of mutton will be the hero of the fair, and be carried round the place on the shoulders of the men. ”

“ You must be declared winner at the stand-house before you have been seen on the ground. If you have to run the gauntlet through all the slanders and stories they will rake up of me,—if, before you reach the goal, you have to fight all the lost battles of my life over again,—you 'll never see the winning-post. ”

“ Play hard, but play fair. Win if you can, but be a gentleman in your winning, and in your defeat, if you meet defeat, as you will in school and out of it. You have the appearance of quality in your face. ”

“ But all that is of interest here is that after an hour of this desperate brutal business the champion ceased to be the favorite; the man whom he had taunted and bullied, and for whom the public had but little sympathy, was proving himself a likely winner, and under his cruel blows, as sharp and clean as those from a cutlass, his opponent was rapidly giving way. ”

“ It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an impalpable greyness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamour, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat, in a sickly atmosphere of tepid scepticism, without much belief in your own right, and still less in that of your adversary. ”

“ The result of the coalition of such conflicting elements may be read in the rapid succession of events, one military leader succeeding another, and, fired by jealousy and the dread of rivalry, summarily disposing of his predecessor. The popular idol of to-day may tomorrow be a victim to his own superiority, as envy, like death, loves a shining mark. ”

“ Never, however, did skill, strength, and presence of mind, do so much for one individual as they did for the man in grey. For a moment or two he applied himself solely to the defensive, wheeling his horse from the one to the other, as they attacked him with the most extraordinary rapidity and skill,--now parrying one blow, now parrying another, and still watching for an opportunity of resuming the offensive. ”

“ If only the ground had been dry! if only the great gambler—the genius, the hero, call him what you will, but the gambler for all that—if only he had staked his crown, his honour and that of Imperial France on some other stake than his artillery! ”

“ Now, were I to advise one to a short cut for public favor, I would say, 'Be a soldier and win.'”
“Especially 'win,'” I returned.
“By all means add the 'win' and emphasize it. That is my rede: Be sure to win. No one is made to explain a victory, no one tries a conqueror; the error of all errors is the black error of defeat.”
“And yet a good man may lose.”
“Sir, the best man may lose. But you are to consider: When he loses, the public owes him nothing. A farmer toils like a slave; a drought kills his crops; is he paid for the corn he does not raise? ”

“ Thus it may chance that the fairest fighter, finding himself sufficiently kicked and cuffed in the rough-and-tumble, will discover how facilely easy it is to descend to the level of his antagonists, and from this discovery to the awakening of the remorseless passion for success at any price is but a step, long or short according to the exigencies of the struggle. ”

“ It was the great public contest of skill in the arena of the world in which I lived; and when I saw the victor with the crown on his head and the resplendent chain of shields upon his shoulders and breast, surrounded by a cheering multitude, it seemed to me something very great, to which I too some day might aspire. ”

“ There he stood winner over all three, and hardly his hair mussed; and you wouldn't of thought in the beginning that he could lick one of the bunch. It was a good picture, all right, with this fight coming in the first reel to start things off lively. But what I want to know is why, out of these million fights that come off, you never hear a word out of a loser! I'll bet all my Liberty Bonds right now that you never yet heard a man tell about how he was licked in a fair fight. ”

“ If he beat and routed four men in a huge conflict, society, instead of applauding, raised the club of the law and struck him down. It had always done so, but, though the majority voted against him, his tigerish spirit groped after and clung to this truth: to be strong is to be glorious! ”

“ And with a natural sigh,
' 'Tis some poor fellows scull,' said he,
'Who fell in the great victory!
'I find them in the garden,
For there's many here about;
And often when I go to plough,
The ploughshare turns them out:
For many thousand men, 'said he,
'Were slain in that great victory! ”

“ And if a losing game could thus turn to your praise, how much greater will be your joy when you get the better of the adversary, as, please God, you may! Then all men will say that never man of any race won such honour upon earth. Is it not worth the winning?” “By God’s sword!” swore the aged hero, “your counsel is true and good, and goes so straight to my heart that if all the world should forsake the King, save myself, know you what I would do? ”

“ I hope you will win. I know very little about the game, but I intend to be on hand a week from to-morrow, if my duties will allow, and learn something about it; and, naturally, I should prefer to witness a victory rather than a defeat.
“But there are two ways of securing victory. One way is by fair means, honestly, aboveboard; the other way is by unfair methods, by questionable tricks, by deceitful subterfuge. As far as I am concerned personally, I should prefer to witness an honorable defeat rather than a victory won by underhand methods. ”

“ Why does none ride forth from the ranks? Surely someone will straightway begin." And on the other side they say: "See ye not what a champion our adversaries have sent us from their side? Let him who has not yet known it know that, of the four bravest known, this is a pillar equal to the rest." ”

“ Every failure means “out,” and then your opponent has his turn. The winner is the one who gets through first. Such is the game as I remember it, but I have an uneasy suspicion that I have missed something out. ”

“ The taunt is coupled with the triumph—the spoil follows the victory—and the captive is chained to the chariot-wheel of his conqueror, and must adorn the march of his superior by his own shame and sorrows. ”

“ He never forgot the impression made on him in the cock-pit by the rings of staring visages, tier above tier, massed in frenzied eagerness and regularly vibrating with the struggles of the feathered and gaffed champions whose untamable ferocity of valor and pluck seemed to satirize the vulgar pride of human battle. ”

“ So he eagerly went to fight, showing that he was a seeker of honour and not the slave of lucre, and that he set bravery before lust of pelf; and intent to prove that his confidence was based not on hire, but on his own great soul. Not a moment is lost; a ring is made; the course is thronged with soldiers; the champions engage; a din arises; the crowd of onlookers shouts in discord, each backing his own. And so the valour of the champions blazes to white-heat; falling dead under the wounds dealt by one another, they end together the combat and their lives. ”

“ They liked indeed to win, and to destroy the enemy, and to occupy his territory, but they did not like all this to be accomplished by one man, but the rather, at the very zenith of his fame, provided him with an opportunity for disgracing himself, so that another might take his place and divide the glory. ”

“ There is my opponent, I'll thrash him if I can; better to toil out my life-blood drop by drop than let it mount to my cheek as a mantle of shame when I find myself defeated when I might have been victorious. ”

“ Will you abandon victory when it lies within your grasp, and in place of a great King become a fugitive whom all men mock at, an outcast to be hunted down at leisure by that brother against whom you dared to rebel, but on whom you did not dare to shut your hand when he lay in its hollow? ”

“ One arm, however, is free—he clutches in his despair for something that might serve him for a weapon—his club lay within his grasp—hope springs to his heart—he brings down the weapon with a desperate effort, and it fell on the head of his opponent. ”

“ Wherefore let us run in the straight course, the incorruptible contest. And let us resort to it in throngs and contend, that we may also be crowned. And if we cannot all be crowned, let us at least come near to the crown. ”

“ They lost sight of the fact that he had been highly favored by luck in the encounter and that but for luck, coupled with skill, the balance might well have been in the enemy’s favor. They began to look upon victory as a luscious fruit that would always be served to their table–defeats were the bitterberries that the enemy must eat. ”

“ As the victor knelt at her feet, what sudden feeling was it which shot through her bosom? Why did her cheek crimson, her breath come quick, her heart flutter wildly? And why, as the helmet was removed from lord Hastings, did she drop the crown with which she was to reward him, and with a half suppressed scream, faint away? Why! but that in the victor of the tourney she recognised her own outlaw lover.
The joy of the reviving maiden when she found her preserver bending over her, and conjuring her to speak to him once more and forgive his stratagem, we shall not attempt to describe. ”

“ In such cases they appoint public triumphs, and erect trophies to the honour of those who have succeeded; for then do they reckon that a man acts suitably to his nature, when he conquers his enemy in such a way as that no other creature but a man could be capable of, and that is by the strength of his understanding. ”

“ The sports of the lists had done much in days gone by to impress the minds of the people, but the plumed and unwieldy champion was no longer an object either of fear or of reverence to men whose fathers and brothers had shot into the press at Crecy or Poictiers, and seen the proudest chivalry in the world unable to make head against the weapons of disciplined peasants. ”

“ O, is that all, Win? we’ll go back to captain Jordan, to the pig-woman’s, Win, he’ll help us, or she, with a dripping-pan, or an old kettle, or something. The poor greasy soul loves you, Win; and after we’ll visit the Fair all over, Win, and see my puppet-play, Win; you know it’s a fine matter, Win. ”

“ Do you approve of the other sports, running matches, jumping matches, and all the rest?”
“Yes, Sir, of course I do,” said I.
“And you see no harm in one man beating another in a race for a prize?”
“No, Sir, no harm at all.”
“Well, but I suppose one must have activity and endurance to win in any of them?”
“Yes,” said I, “and good pluck, too, Sir. It takes as much heart, I’m sure, any day, to win a hard race as a bout at backsword.”
“Very good,” said he. “Then putting every thing else aside, tell me which you think the best man, he who doesn’t mind having his head broken, or he who does?” ”

“ I said, "and find out whether it is to be a fight or a fair and decent game, in which honors to the first winner are conceded, and the beaten man withdraws. If we are going to have trouble, the sooner we know it the better." ”

“ I would no more willingly let my opponent find a flaw in my truth, honesty and frankness than in fencing I would let him beat down my guard. Of that part of victory which consists in respecting yourself and making your adversary respect you you can be always sure if you are worthy of respect ”