Rensselaer Republican, Volume 19, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 March 1887 — Fencing. [ARTICLE]

Fencing.

The charm of fencing for beginnersis that when you take position before a good swordsman you need not be hopeTess oFmaking a point. After aTeasonable amount of practice with the foils you are able occasionally to slip through his guard and enjoy the simple vanity of touching the supposed untouchable. This comes from the perfection of fair play reached after several centuries of minute changes in the positions, jveapons, and accouterments of the masters of fence. No ptiie/atliletic sport equalizes so closely the powers natural to a mfln and a vYoman, a gray-beard find a boy, a Hercules find a consumptive. “.Ladies iu the best rank of life fence more and more as they discover its value for health and good looks,, instead of leaving it entirely to ac.tresses, who liave always used the exercise for learning how to plant and niQve their feet intelligently. ' All over Europe the universities foster sword or foil play of one kind or another, and in nation apart which we call the city of London, a club for fencing lias existed these twenty years. The London Fencing Clul>, under the ratronage of the. Prince of Wales, and having on its list many peers of the realms is as aristocratic in its aim as th e Fen cers I Club of New York, of which we will liave somediing to say presently, is demoeTatie. It was founded in 1863 as a club for fencing and gymnastic'with a membership of three hundred, and Jiclped to its present quarters by a paternal government. It has two French and three English teachers, .nnd from its neariiess to St. James’ is of jiractical use to the officers of the Queen’s household troops. On this side of the Atlant i cTr-frnr- htrg » -eit ies have al way s had professors of the art. but, like unhappy Hulett, of New York, in 1770, seldom has one been able to make a living from lessons in fencing alone. At New Orleans the chances have been be.tte.rUowing.to the large Creede and French jioj'ultrtion: there oftener—than elsewhere liave duels in this century been ilecivled bv the swnrk One must not forget, moreover, that the German Turn Verein of New York makes something of fencing, and that at West Point and Annapolis it is a branch of study employing a number of instructors, a study which, unfortunately, officers of 'the army Tract the navy promptly lotget.—Century. The Pinta was one of the three little vessels with which Columbus set sail for America from Pales, Spain, on the 3d of August, 1492. The Pinta xvas commanded by a famous Spanish navigator, Alonzo Pinzon.