520 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



regard the gymnastics of a foreign school without a slight feeling 

 of wonder and compassion, so much more animating and interest- 

 ing do the games of his remembrance seem to him/' 



Statistics regarding the benefits that students have derived 

 from athletic games are frequently asked for. These are difficult 

 to state in the form of records. Nevertheless, the advantages are 

 very real and very evident. A graduate of the University of 

 California writes me, " Athletics proper, as distinguished from 

 physical culture, are enormously important for girls more so 

 than for boys, for it brings out a side of their nature cramped 

 from childhood." She says that, from her own experience, she 

 knows that "there is nothing like the hard-played game to bring 

 out powers of the body that the routine work can not touch. Still 

 more, the mental and moral effect is wonderful. There is a zest, 

 a freedom, a whole-souled sincerity of effort, a flinging aside of 

 every consideration of how she is looking, or whether she is do- 

 ing the proper thing, that goes right to the root of some of the 

 most inveterate evils of feminine adolescence. The effect on our 

 basket-ball girls has been perceptible in a single year ; all their 

 attitudes toward life have taken on a healthier and heartier tone." 

 She adds that this is heartily the belief of the director of the 

 gymnasium of the University of California. 



The tendency of athletic games to dispel morbid conditions is, 

 I think, too well known to require comment. One can not watch 

 a game of basket-ball without observing the will-power, nerve- 

 control, and general self-government which the rules of the game 

 to prevent all rough play, and the necessity of quick decision and 

 instant decided action, cultivate. 



The match games give outdoor entertainment to the whole 

 body of students, thoroughly diverting, and of the most health- 

 ful kind, free from all the unwholesome influences which more or 

 less attend dramatics. 



As a less direct result of the growing interest in athletics we 

 may notice the increased stature of women, and a corrected 

 aesthetic judgment which now pronounces the normal form the 

 most beautiful. 



A dinner was recently given at Vassar by one of the students, 

 at which the guest qualification was the habitual wearing of 

 broad-soled shoes. The hostess is a disciple of Matthew Arnold, 

 who can not enjoy " sweetness and light " without a disposition to 

 " make them prevail." 



Many students ride the bicycle in all the colleges. So many 

 papers have appeared in current literature setting forth the ad- 

 vantages of bicycling that little remains to be said on the subject. 

 A note appeared in a September journal to the effect that at the 

 annual sanitary conference at Newcastle, England, Dr. Turner 



