Of the domestic life of the sport little is known. It has been said
that Cupid and Hymen sometimes take a hand in the game and copper the
queen of hearts to lose. Daring theorists have averred--not content
with simply saying--that a sport often contracts a spouse, and even
incurs descendants. Sometimes he sits in the game of politics; and
then at chowder picnics there is a revelation of a Mrs. Sport and
little Sports in glazed hats with tin pails.
But mostly the sport is Oriental. He believes his women-folk should
not be too patent. Somewhere behind grilles or flower-ornamented fire
escapes they await him. There, no doubt, they tread on rugs from
Teheran and are diverted by the bulbul and play upon the dulcimer and
feed upon sweetmeats. But away from his home the sport is an integer.
He does not, as men of other races in Manhattan do, become the convoy
in his unoccupied hours of fluttering laces and high heels that tick
off delectably the happy seconds of the evening parade. He herds with
his own race at corners, and delivers a commentary in his Carib lingo
upon the passing show.
"Big Jim" Dougherty had a wife, but he did not wear a button portrait
of her upon his lapel. He had a home in one of those brown-stone,
iron-railed streets on the west side that look like a recently
excavated bowling alley of Pompeii.
To this home of his Mr. Dougherty repaired each night when the hour
was so late as to promise no further diversion in the arch domains
of sport.
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