COLLEGE ATHLETICS. 451 



favor from the college authorities. But, in view of the good already 

 done by it as a voluntary system proceeding from the students them- 

 selves, no candid man can maintain that it should be put aside without 

 a fair consideration of its merits. In addition to those already men- 

 tioned, we claim for it the following advantages : 



1. The college is sending out a better breed of men. College ath- 

 letics send their healthy influence into the schools, and in them conse- 

 quently increased attention is given to physical development. Thus 

 the material coming from the schools is improved. In college this 

 material is better preserved and better developed under the present 

 system of athletics. More well-trained minds in more forceful bodies 

 are graduated from college than in former years. What President 

 Eliot says on this subject is as applicable to Yale as to Harvard : " It 

 is agreed on all hands that the increased attention given to physical 

 exercise and athletic sports within the past twenty-five years has been, 

 on the whole, of great advantage to the university ; that the average 

 physique of the mass of students has been sensibly improved, the dis- 

 cipline of the college been made easier and more effective, the work 

 of many zealous students been done with greater safety, and the ideal 

 student been transformed from a stooping, weak, and sickly youth, 

 into one well-formed, robust, and healthy." 



2. The system of college athletics gives opportunity for the devel- 

 opment of certain qualities of mind and character not all provided for 

 in the college curriculum, but qualities nevertheless quite as essential 

 to true success in life as ripe scholarship or literary culture. Courage, 

 resolution, and perseverance are required in all the men who excel in 

 athletic sports. The faculty for organization, executive power, the 

 qualities which enable men to control and lead other men, and again 

 those other qualities by which men yield faithful obedience to recog- 

 nized authority, are all called into action in every boat-race, in every 

 ball contest, and through all the preliminary training. In athletics 

 the college world is a little republic of young men with authority for 

 government delegated to presidents, captains, and commodores, and 

 loyally supported by the resources and bodies of the governed. Is the 

 system not worth something as a means of preparation for the respon- 

 sibilities of life in the larger republic outside the campus ? 



3. The system is conducive to the good order of the college. It 

 conduces to good order in furnishing occupation for the physically ac- 

 tive. There are men in every class who seem to require some outlet for 

 their superabundant animal life. Before the day of athletics, such men 

 supplied the class bullies in fights between town and gown, and were 

 busy at night in gate-stealing and in other pranks now gone out of 

 fashion. A number of them were dissipated men, and had to diversify 

 the monotony of their class-room life by a spree and a row. Many such 

 men, under the present system, find occupation for all this activity in 

 regular training. A man who goes into training can not go on sprees, 



