Sprinters are born and not made. The making helps, and is necessary, but the gift of speed must be born into them. Almost any youth with a presentable pair of legs, a sound heart and lungs, sand, and a bit of righting edge can, by faithful training, make himself into a respectable distance runner. Men whom one remembers in college as apparently hopeless duffers one sees a year or two later at Mott Haven—members of the team now, perhaps even winning the mile or the two-mile run, and at last carrying home the varsity initial to be cherished forever after and handed down to their children's children. In the sprints things are ordered differently. Your sprinter may be long or short legged, it is true; he may be as slim as a match or he may have to hurl his thirteen stone like a catapult down the hundred yards to the tape; but to be really a fast man, as we reckon speed in these days of better than even time, he must have a certain combination of strength and spring and nervous energy, a dynamic je ne sais quoi, which can no more be acquired by training than one can acquire six fingers, or blue eyes, or an extra cubit of stature. In the actual running of those arbitrary distances, the one-hundred-yard and the two-hundred-twenty-yard dashes—which have come to be taken as our tests of speed—and particularly in the shorter of these distances, the start is, more than anything else, the all-important thing. In no way can the distance runner or the average man who has never run at all have this more vividly demonstrated than by starting from a mark with a man who can cover one hundred yards in even time. Although he will feel that he is jumping from the mark the instant the pistol snaps, he will find that there is an appreciable instant in which he stands practically rooted to the ground, while his rival, as if by some baffling magic, shoots out and upward and into his stride. In the ordinary race nowadays, so common and axiomatic has this trick of fast starting become, runners are generally too evenly matched to make the extreme quickness of the start apparent to the average spectator. This quickness in starting is, of course, to a certain extent a matter of practice and judgment, but it is also the result of a more rapid telegraphing from the eye and ear to the brain and back again to the muscles, and as such it is much a matter of temperament and only very partially a thing to be learned. All-important as the quick start is in such a distance as the one-hundred-yard dash, there are nevertheless remarkable sprinters who have depended more on their speed during the last half of the distance than during the first. Wefers, for instance, was such a man. Many a time this large and powerful runner would be on even terms with or even behind his rivals until the last twenty or thirty yards, when he would slip mysteriously away from them as though some exterior power had interposed and lifted him on. I never saw Crum, the Iowa sprinter, run, but I have been told that the same thing was often true of him. In the hundred-yard much more than in the distance runs, the ground to be covered is "felt" as a unit. The experienced runner feels those various strides that are to carry him to the goal in one definite mental impression, very much as one reads a sentence of type without noticing the separate letters; he hurls himself toward the tape as toward a mark to be hit, very much as you swing your fist through the air to land on a punching bag, or describe a curve with a whip-lash, with a definite knowledge that at a certain point, which you can "feel" muscularly, the lash will catch and snap. Different runners define this sensation differently. One man conceives of the distance as a single straight line, for instance; another feels it is in two waves, so to speak, one sweeping upward from the start, and the other sweeping upward to the tape, with a just appreciable "hang" somewhere in the middle distance. It is when a man loses his grip on this definite conception of the whole distance that he runs away from himself and begins to "climb stairs." While thus refining on these purely subjective and psychological aspects of the sprint, one may not inappropriately mention another of the less obvious truths about running of which the spectator is not aware. Every man has some distance which, conditions being equal, he can run better than any other distance. This distance is determined by the man's build, temperament, and physical make-up, and it may not coincide with any of those arbitrary distances which we have established by mutual consent as the length of our races. Records are, therefore, to a certain extent, only approximate proofs of the ability of the runners who made them. It is only approximately true to say that Smith is a faster man than Jones because he can consistently beat him at one hundred yards, when Jones, perhaps, could beat Smith quite as consistently at anything up to half that distance. This is, of course, rather more a theoretical than a practical difficulty, and the man who breaks a world's record earns all the glory that is coming to him. And yet, when the fraction of a watch-tick determines whether or not a man shall be athletically famous, it seems only right and proper to recall the fact that our rigidly measured distances are somewhat arbitrary, and to remember, in saluting the champion, the vast army of plucky chaps who have eaten their hearts out and been forgotten because, by a hand's breadth, perhaps, they were fated to be classed among those who also ran.
The crouching start which distinguishes modern sprinting form from that of the early days did not come into vogue until the early nineties. It is now universally used. There had been up to that time two variations of the standing start—the so-called "theoretical" and the "Sheffield" or professional start. In the "theoretical" start the runner put either the right or left foot on the mark, but always the opposite arm was thrust forward. In the "Sheffield" start either the right foot and the right arm, or the left foot and the left arm, were put forward. It was asserted by the advocates of each of these starts that it brought the arms and legs into the best position for most easily and speedily falling into the motion used in running, and there are men to-day, who used these starts when they were in college years ago, who cannot be convinced that they were not faster than the now Universal crouching start. That the crouching start is faster, however, there is no longer any doubt. That it is safer, that is to say, that the runner is less likely to be penalized for stepping over the line when he is crouching solidly on all fours, is obvious. In the crouching, or, as it was called when it first came into use, the "student's" start, both hands are placed on the starting line, with the fingers extended generally and the arms straight. One foot, generally the left, is set about four inches back of the line, and the other is firmly set at a comfortable distance behind the first and exactly parallel to it. When the rear foot is in position, the rear knee should reach to the middle of the forward foot. Both feet should be firmly set in a solid pocket, scooped or stamped out of the cinders. With his fingers on the line, and kneeling on the rear knee, the runner may wait at his ease until the starter is ready. At the signal "Get on your marks!" he may rise partially, still keeping his fingers on the line; at "Get set!" the rear leg straightens somewhat, and the runner leans forward, until the weight of his body is trembling, over the line on the pivot of his fingers. At the pistol shot he dives forward, coming up gradually to an erect position as he works into his stride. Aside from its added security, the theory of the crouching start is that the runner can get away from the line quicker by, so to speak, falling or diving away from a solid brace than he can by trusting merely to the spring that he gets from his legs minus the help of his body's momentum, as is the case in the standing start. C. H. Sherrill of Yale, '89, was the first amateur of any note to try the crouching start. Sherrill was very unsteady on his feet, and he tried the crouching position in the hope that he might remedy this defect. He never made a great success of it, however, and he returned finally, I believe, to the old standing style. But the new start had already come into favor, and early in the nineties it was adopted almost universally. Even though no speed were gained by it, the added security of the crouching position, with all "four feet" on the ground, is enough to justify its adoption. And in these days, when every false start or slip over the line is strictly penalized, no runner can afford to play with danger. In the early days of running in this country, starting was quite another matter. False starts were rarely penalized, the pistol generally followed immediately on the signal "Get set!" and so shiftless were the starters and officials that "beating the pistol" was one of the tricks which less sportsmanlike runners constantly practised. In an article on sprinting, written as late as 1891, the late Malcolm Ford remarks that "a really competent pistol was almost unheard of six years ago;" and in examining many of the minor records of the first ten or fifteen years of American athletics, one must remember that the laxity of starters in these early days was only too often matched with an equal lack of skill in that most delicate and scrupulous performance—the timing of a sprint.
What one might call the modern epoch of hundred-yard sprinting began in 1890, when slender young John Owen, Jr., of the Detroit Athletic Club came out of the West and beat the best men of the East in better than even time. This great race took place on the Onoloston track at Washington, D.C., and Owen had among his competitors Luther Cary of Princeton, the fastest man in the colleges at that time, and Westing of the New York Athletic Club, the fastest man in club athletics. The three were almost neck and neck at the finish, Cary only one foot behind—a proper fight for a record. This sprint was one of those which illustrates vividly how a race may be won on the start. Owen beat Cary three feet on the leap-away, and he was only one foot ahead at the tape. In other words, had they started equally well Cary would probably have won. The latter-day experiments in psychology have an interesting bearing on such differences in quickness as these. By accurate and exhaustive tests it has been shown that a variation of several tenths of a second is not uncommon between different individuals in the comparative quickness with which each acts muscularly after receiving the same mental stimulus. As every tenth of a second means one yard in a hundred-yard dash, it is apparent how important, in the case of two runners of equal sprinting speed, is this matter of mere temperament.
In the twenty years that had elapsed since "Father Bill" Curtis used to win the hundred, just by way of variety from throwing the hammer and weights, up to the time that young Owen proved that under normal and fair conditions a man could run in better than ten seconds flat, scores of fast men had been developed, any one of a dozen or so of whom at some time or other were said to have covered the distance in even time. W. C. Wilmer of the Short Hills Athletic Club was the first club amateur to be credited with this feat at the national championships, when he won the hundred in 1878 in 10 seconds; and it was not until 1891 that Luther Cary of Princeton, winning at Mott Haven, brought the intercollegiate record down to even time. Among the club amateurs who had won the sprints during these years was Malcolm Ford—only an adequate sprinter, but at all-round athletics quite the best man of his time—and the famous "Lon" Meyers, who, although not in the strict sense of the word a sprinter, was, perhaps, the most extraordinary runner of which there is any record. Among the college sprinters there had come and gone Evart Wendell, Brooks, Sherrill, Lee of Pennsylvania, Luther Cary, and Wendell Baker. The work of Meyers will be more fully treated in the chapter on distance running, and it is, perhaps, sufficient in this place to give merely a brief summary of his performances in the sprints. He is credited with a record of 5-1/2 seconds for fifty yards, made in New York City in 1884, the conclusive authenticity of which has sometimes been doubted ; with Duffey and others he divides the honor of a record of 6-2/5 seconds for sixty yards. Although the times made were nothing extraordinary, Meyers won the amateur championship in the hundred in 1880 and 1881, and in the two-twenty in 1879 and 1880; and in a general way it may be said that he won repeatedly in the sprints against the best men of his day, both in this country and in England. Malcolm Ford, who could acquit himself with credit in almost every track event, although he was not a phenomenal performer at any of them, won the amateur championship hundred in 1884, 1885, and 1886, and the two-twenty in 1885 and 1886. The times made were only tolerable, but they are worthy of notice as part of a really remarkable athletic career, which included the winning of the all-round championship four times, and a successful and practically continuous participation in competitive athletics for over fifteen years. Westing of the Manhattan Athletic Club, who ran third to Owen in his record-breaking race, was, perhaps, the next most notable club athlete who did the sprints during the eighties. Westing won several amateur championships in the dashes, and in 1888 he went to England and won out in the hundred there.
Of the college sprinters of the pre-Owenite period Mr. Evart Wendell of Harvard is one of the best known to the present generation. Mr. Wendell was the intercollegiate champion of his day, but his interest in track athletics did not die when the time came for him to drop out of the running, and he has never ceased to devote a considerable portion of his leisure to the enthusiastic encouragement of college sport. His leading of the cheering at Harvard-Yale games of all sorts has become a sort of classic. A Mott Haven event without this familiar figure among the timers at the tape can hardly be imagined, and it is believed by many careful observers of undergraduate phenomena that Mr. Wendell's annual meteoric appearance on the winter evening when the Harvard track-team candidates get together in answer to the first call, his bringing of the glamour of the "outside world" into the quiet of the Yard, his effervescent reminiscences, and his splendid evening clothes have done as much to put backbone and enthusiasm into bandy-legged freshmen, and convince them that not all the éclat goes to the eleven and the crew, as all the exhortations of college editors and team captains and the hopes of athletic glory.
The best college sprinter before Evart Wendell was H. H. Lee of Pennsylvania, who won the hundred three years in succession, in 1877, 1878, and 1879, and the two-twenty twice. Directly after Wendell came Brooks of Yale, '85, who as a freshman won the Mott Haven hundred and two-twenty in 1882 and captured the latter event again in 1883. Brooks weighed something like one hundred eighty pounds, yet he managed to do 50-1/5 seconds in a quarter, and defeated "Lon" Meyers from scratch at the New York Athletic Club games in 1882 and in 1884 in the two- twenty. Wendell Baker of Harvard, who also ran at this time, was an unusually pretty runner. He lacked but one inch of six feet, and in running trim he weighed a trifle less than one hundred forty pounds. Although Baker never won the hundred at Mott Haven, he was good, when in his best form, for ten seconds flat, and he captured the two-twenty three years in succession—in 1884, when he brought the intercollegiate record down to 22-2/5 seconds, and in 1885 and 1886. The quarter in 1885 went also to Baker, and in that same year F. M. Bonine of the University of Michigan won the hundred. It was the first time an athlete from a Western college had won a championship at Mott Haven. Sherrill of Yale, '89, was the next collegiate sprinter of unusual ability to appear, and one of the best runners that ever was developed at Yale. He won the hundred four years in succession, the two-twenty three years in succession, and while a sophomore he ran against all comers at the national amateur meet and won. He was good for ten flat, and it used to be Trainer Mike Murphy's opinion that if he had been pushed hard enough in 1889, when he was in perhaps his best form, he would have beaten even time. Luther Cary of Princeton appropriately closes this pre-Owenite period, although he ran and won at Mott Haven the year after the new record was made. Cary was a short man, and his style was a bit labored, but there is little doubt that he was the fastest college sprinter up to his time. In 1891 he won in the same day both dashes, putting the hundred-yard intercollegiate record at ten flat for the first time, and breaking Sherrill's two-twenty record by two-fifths of a second. Cary's record in the longer dash held until 1896, when Wefers appeared and all established things went to smash. It was Cary, as we have already observed, who ran second to Owen when he broke the ten-second record, and in that race, after a slow start, he had the honor of gaining on the champion, and finishing at least two feet nearer to him than he had started.
The breaking of the record for the hundred yards was not the only thing which marked the early nineties as the beginning of a new period in track athletics. It was in the early nineties, as we have said, that the standing start—one of the vague reminders of the old days of professionalism—gave way entirely to the more rakish and graceful crouching start. The semi-circus costumes of tights and trunks had already been displaced by the more sportsmanlike-looking running clothes of the present day, and a man who could not do at least 10-1/5 when he had to was no longer to be looked upon as a sprinter of the first class. In 1896, six years after Owen had broken the ten-second record, Bernard J. Wefers of Georgetown repeated the feat of the young Westerner, and the hundred was again done in one-fifth of a second better than even time. It seemed as though man's limit had, perhaps, been reached, and for six more years the breathless quest went on in vain, and then the impossible was again achieved, and Arthur Duffey of Georgetown University snapped the tape in 9-3/5 seconds. In terms of distance this tiny fraction of time meant beating a nine and four-fifths man by about six feet of daylight.
The average standard of speed in the sprints so markedly improved during the nineties that it is quite impossible in this place to describe in any detail the performances of any but the record-breaking men. At the intercollegiates, before the little whirlwind appeared from Georgetown to take the hundred four years in succession, Cary, Ramsdell of Pennsylvania, Crum of Iowa, Wefers, and Tewkesbury and Kranzlen of Pennsylvania had all done 10 seconds flat. Of these, in addition to Wefers, Crum at least was supposed by his friends to have beaten even time on other tracks. In the two-twenty, since Cary had set the record at 21-4/5 in 1891, W. Swayne, Jr., of Yale, Ramsdell, Crum, Wefers, Tewkesbury, Lightner of Harvard, had all done 22 seconds or better, and Wefers had lowered the record for the longer dash to 21-1/5 seconds. Close on the heels of these first-string men, and themselves first-string men in their own colleges, were and are many fast runners—runners like Richards of Yale, Jarvis of Princeton, Maybury of Wisconsin, and any number of others whose work cannot even be glanced at here, who ran during the nineties and are running every spring now on scores of cinder paths in times that thirty years ago would have been thought phenomenal.
In the sprinting class, and yet in a class by themselves, are those runners who have the peculiar ability of attaining extraordinary speed for all the short distances up to fifty or seventy-five yards, but who have never run with equal success in the regulation longer sprinting distances. A number of men divide the records for these, so to speak, "trick" distances, but the most typical and consistent performer was, perhaps, Edward B. Bloss of Harvard, '94. Bloss was essentially a short-distance sprinter. In his day he held the records for all the short distances up to seventy-five yards, and they were as follows: fifteen yards in 2-1/5 seconds ; twenty yards in 2-4/5 seconds; thirty yards in 3-3/5 seconds; forty yards in 4-2/3 seconds; fifty yards in 5-3/5 seconds; and seventy-five yards in 7-4/5 seconds.
These were absolutely authentic records, a thing which cannot be said positively of the performances of some of the quick starters who have subsequently claimed to have shaved one-fifth of a second of Bloss's time. When Bloss first began to run he used the standing start, but he later adopted the surer and faster crouching one, and his style had the individuality of planting the rear foot unusually far back. From this brace he would leap away as though shot out of a gun, and the way he would swarm away from the line for thirty or forty yards seemed to the men beside him as almost magical. Bloss, as might be expected, was a small, stocky runner with plenty of compact muscle. Duffey and Wefers both share with other less notable sprinters records in the short distances, and somewhat over a dozen sprinters are credited with 4-3/5 seconds for forty yards. Even "Lon" Meyers, who was not essentially a runner of the "trick" distances, is credited, not without some slight doubt of authenticity, with a record of 5-1/2 seconds for fifty yards. It is very rare that the men who are particularly good at these short distances succeed in running the whole hundred yards. A. H. Green of Harvard, '92, who, for example, was the fastest man at the very short distances at Cambridge in his day, never did as well on cinders as he did on boards, and the best he could do for the whole hundred yards was 10-3/4 seconds. In fact, a peculiar sort of combination of nervous energy and running "action" seems to be required for these distances, and clever performances at them are due more to the spring that a jumper uses than to the steady stride of the sprinter.
Of the two preeminent sprinters of the present generation the performances of Wefers have been somewhat lost sight of, followed so soon and eclipsed as they were by the record-breaking running of Arthur Duffey. And yet not even Duffey was as fast as Wefers in the longer sprint and for all-round consistent work at the short distances, and leaving out Duffey's record-breaking hundred, it is not altogether easy to give complete preeminence to the younger son of Georgetown. Wefers was a man of large physique, as strong above the waist as below it, and in athletic costume he might quite as reasonably have been taken for a hammer-thrower as a sprinter. Had he trained for the middle distances instead of the dashes, there seems little reason to believe that he might not have distinguished himself at the quarter and half mile. At the former distance he performed more than creditably on many occasions, and his whole style of running was based not so much on the explosive swirl of the quick starter as on solid strength and stability and length of stride. He was not a phenomenally fast starter, and it was in the last rather than in the first thirty yards that he generally won his races. Wefers broke the intercollegiate record in the hundred yards and smashed all records, amateur and professional, in the two-twenty in 1896, when, on the same day, he ran the hundred in 9-4/5 seconds and the longer sprint in 21-1/5 seconds. This performance definitely stamped him as the preeminent sprinter of his day, in spite of the fact that the Westerners, Crum, Maybury, and Rush, all had been credited with a hundred in less than even time. Wefers's time in the hundred, taken as it was by the intercollegiate timers, was absolutely authentic, and his extraordinary race in the longer sprint was a triumphant corroboration of his ability, if anything of the sort were needed. Wefers won his record-breaking hundred that day by an easy seven feet from H. C. Patterson of Williams, while J. S. Brown of Cornell was third by half a yard. In the two-twenty Wefers finished a whole second ahead of Patterson, and his speed in the last forty yards, when he simply lost the other three runners, was probably the fastest running ever done in this country up to that time. Patterson finished in 22-1/5 seconds, Denholm of Harvard was two feet behind Patterson, and Brown of Cornell was only a few inches behind Denholm.
The title which Wefers won at Mott Haven in the spring of 1896 he defended with consistent and invincible running under all sorts of conditions and on all sorts of tracks. He won the intercollegiate championship in the hundred again in 1897, and at the national amateur championships, where he had already won both the hundred and two-twenty in 1895 and in 1896, he repeated the feat in 1897. At this national championship meet in 1897 Wefers did 9-4/5 seconds again in the hundred and came within one-fifth of a second of equalling his world's record in the two-twenty. In addition to these well-known performances, Wefers did record time and better at all sorts of distances from forty yards up to three hundred, the latter of which distances he ran at the Traver's Island track on September 26, 1896, in 30-3/5 seconds. Wendell Baker's famous straight-away quarter in 47-3/4 seconds was probably as near as any one had come to such time before. Just what it means to do three hundred yards in 30-3/5 seconds may be vividly understood when it is considered that such a performance is the equivalent of doing three consecutive hundred-yard dashes, each in 10-1/5 seconds. When such a runner could hurl himself time and again down the hundred-yard stretch and not break the tape in less than the 9-4/5 seconds, set by young Owen six years before, it began to look as though man's limit had been definitely reached and that the best the human machine could ever do was one-fifth of a second better than even time. Six more years went by and then Duffey came.
Duffey had won the hundred at Mott Haven in 1901 on a sodden track and in a pouring rain. Fast time was impossible, of course, but in the same year, on another track, he had been credited with 9-4/5 seconds, and that he was a natural sprinter had for a long time been known. When, therefore, he came down to the intercollegiates in 1902 and ran one of his trial heats in 9-4/5, everybody knew that something was going to happen in the final. The day was a perfect one, warm and fair, with only the gentlest of breezes stirring; the track hard and fast. Crouching beside Duffey in the final heat were Schick of Harvard, Westing of Pennsylvania, Moulton of Yale, and Cadogan of California. At the pistol, Schick got away first. At the middle distance the Harvard sprinter was still ahead, and Duffey said afterward that he thought this was what made him break the record. He and Schick had run as boys together, and Duffey had always been able to beat him. Yet, when he could see out of the corner of his eye that his rival was still a shade in the lead at the fifty yards, Duffey began to get frightened. It struck him that Schick was going to beat him at last. Now Duffey, like many other sprinters, ran the hundred in two bursts, so to speak, or beats. Many veteran sprinters actually perfect this method of running a hundred so that they breathe only twice during the distance. They take one long breath when the command is given to "set," hold it until just before the final effort is to be made, and then take another full breath for the last burst of speed. However this may have been in Duffey's case, the Georgetown sprinter knew that the race was half over, that Schick was still ahead of him, and if his second "burst" didn't carry him beyond his rival the race was lost. He took the challenge, threw every ounce he had left into the running, and he broke the tape in 9-3/5 seconds and established a new world's record.
Every man of the five who ran with Duffey that day ran very fast. All were well up at the finish, and Schick, the 1904 intercollegiate champion, probably did better than 10 seconds flat. A fifth of a second at that point in a race means six feet, so that a runner within twelve feet of the winner must have beaten even time. Moulton of Yale was third; Westing of Pennsylvania, fourth; and Cadogan of California, last. The unquestioned accuracy of the time of Duffey's sprint, and of the length of the course, established Duffey's record beyond the slightest question of a doubt. Four of the most experienced timers in the country held the watches that day—Mr. Evart Jansen Wendell, Mr. Robert Stoll, Mr. Mortimer Bishop, and Mr. C. C. Hughes. The watches of the first three gentlemen all registered 9-3/5 seconds; Mr. Hughes's watch registered 9-2/5 seconds, the strongest possible corroboration of the testing of the other watches, and at least a vague encouragement of the belief that even Duffey's time may yet be beaten. The course was measured directly after the race, and found to be one inch longer than the required distance.
With the record of world's champion thus attained, Duffey proceeded to establish his claim to the title by consistent performances on all sorts of tracks, and under all sorts of conditions, both here and abroad. He won the hundred at Mott Haven again in 1903 in 9-4/5 seconds, making his third consecutive intercollegiate victory. He had already won a national amateur championship as far back as 1899, and he had won the hundred at the English championships in 1900 and 1901. Duffey went abroad again with his new honor fresh upon him, and although the climate disagreed with him, and he went away off in form, he defeated all comers and at the championship meeting won again. For the fourth time, in 1903, Duffey again invaded England, and again he won at the championships and vanquished all comers with consistent ease in various parts of the United Kingdom.
Duffey was the typical "born" sprinter. Even as a boy he found it easy to outrun the boys he played with, and although he tried the pole-vault when he first became interested in athletics, he soon gave that up for the thing he was made for. In 1899 he met and defeated Quinlan of Harvard, and the same season Quinlan went to England with the Harvard-Yale team and won. When Duffey won that year at the national championships, he began to suspect what he had in him. In shape and running form Duffey was again a typical sprinter. He was built like a watch. He had no waste tissue nor awkward joints. Rather short, but muscular and compact, and with a limitless amount of explosive energy, he combined many of the qualities of a high-power electric motor and a rubber ball. He was a rubber ball at the "trick" distances up to fifty yards, and the high-power machine for the last fifty yards of the hundred. The low, lightning-like scrambling start, such as men like Bloss were masters of, was Duffey's too, and he was able to add to it for the rest of the distance the steady express-locomotive action of the perfect sprinter. Duffey covered the distance, as we have already said, in two bursts, so that he not only finished as strong as he started, but there was in the last twenty or thirty yards an explosive rush, corresponding somewhat to the rush away from the mark at the start, which was peculiarly effective in beating out his opponents.
The limit of speed which the unaided human body, propelled by its own energy, can attain, has, obviously, very nearly, if not completely, been realized. The human body is at best but an awkward machine for producing speed. Any self-respecting hound or rabbit could make all our Duffeys and Weferses look like thirty cents. Every sprinter knows the difficulty of avoiding "climbing stairs" when stretching his stride to the utmost; those who overreach themselves and fall merely because the brain's ambitious command cannot be obeyed by the muscles, the tendons that snap now and then at the supreme moment, show how weak are the runner's means compared with his desire. Some one may yet run one hundred yards in three-fifths of a second better than even time. One stop-watch said that Duffey did. We may know, at any rate, that the limit is only a hair's breadth away, and for what one calls practical purposes it has already been attained.
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