Sportsmanship

Some women riding to hounds in Geneseo, N. Y., came to a place where, because no fox will go where there is iron, they could gain on the beast by taking a cut of a mile along the railroad tracks. They had ridden into a deep culvert with sides too steep for the horses to vault when suddenly the rails began to tremble, a train thundered round a curve a few hundred yards behind them, and they were called upon to decide a delicate conflict between morality and sportsmanship. Morally, they were obligated to save their own lives if they could. To do this was not difficult. They had only to dismount and look the other way while the train took their horses. Sportsmanship offered them a dubious chance. They took it, struck in their spurs, and dashed straight down the ties toward the culvert's end while the train with brakes screaming, rushed up behind them, closer, closer and then --just as the last cropped tail twitched out of its path--roared by.