726 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



to the city youths a sport more fascinating with all its dangers 

 and severe restraints than the temptations of city life. What 

 this boon means in its effects npon the coming generations the 

 coming time will show. It certainly is bringing forward a more 

 virile race even in the cities. And the cities in the past have 

 been the first points of decadence of a decaying civilization. As 

 the census reports show, the population is flocking more and more 

 to the cities, so that the growth of athletics began at a time when 

 it was most needed. What President Eliot, in his late report, 

 says of the effect of athletic sports at Harvard, applies with equal 

 truth and force to athletics in all educational institutions uni- 

 versities as well as schools " namely, that there has been a de- 

 cided improvement in the average health and strength of Harvard 

 students during the past twenty-five years. The gain is visible in 

 all sorts of students, among those who devote themselves to study 

 as well as among those who give much time to sports." It was 

 in the colleges that this increased attention to physical exercise 

 was begun, and begun by the students themselves. The system 

 extended to the schools. It has been the parent of most of the 

 athletic clubs now in existence. It furnishes a healthy stimulus 

 and recreation to thousands of young men who but for it would 

 be wasting their strength in much more brutal and brutalizing 

 excitements. It is not too much to say that it is the salvation of 

 our youth. And just as the scholarship of our universities stimu- 

 lates the intellectual life of these schools, so the athletic contests 

 of the universities keep alive among the schoolboys a healthy ad- 

 miration for a manly physique. This effect of the college sports 

 has not been sufficiently noticed. It is worth all it costs. It could 

 never have existed if it had not been for the publicity given to 

 the college contests, and to football contests in particular. It has 

 given order to play and introduced obedience to authority and 

 the love of courage into every school in the land. It is not en- 

 tirely because Yale and Harvard play football or baseball, row 

 and train, that their students show a " decided improvement in 

 their average health during the past twenty-five years," but also 

 because their example has been followed by the schools, and con- 

 sequently better developed young men are sent from the schools 

 to the universities. The improvement is not confined to col- 

 lege students. It is noticeable in the young men of the whole 

 land. It has produced another effect. The young women of 

 the country have been induced to emulate the physical develop- 

 ment of their brothers. They have not played all their rough 

 games, it is true ; still, it is undeniable that the greater atten- 

 tion to the physique of women is in some degree an effect of 

 the visible good results of the better development of the men. 

 And all the aids of physical development, such as gymnasiums. 



