Life — July 27, 1922 — page 10: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# "The Seven Ages of Sport" This illustrated sequence humorously depicts sport across different life stages: **Stage I**: An infant bouncing on a nurse's lap—sport as physical play begins in infancy. **Stage II**: School-age boys playing with "steelie and shining jimmies" (marbles), competing for "keeps"—the competitive schoolboy phase. **Stage III**: A young man playing tennis, "caught in the net that he himself put up, / His vantage lost"—likely satirizing romantic entanglement interfering with athletic pursuits. The domestic scene (woman with umbrella nearby, country house setting) suggests courtship has sidelined his sporting ambitions. The cartoon's progression suggests how life circumstances—particularly romance and marriage—progressively diminish a man's athletic engagement, moving from innocent childhood play toward adult social complications.