COLLEGE ATHLETICS. 593 



the pupils despise the lowness of the men quite as much as do the 

 faculty themselves. Another and better remedy would be to select an 

 amateur athlete from the graduates, educated as a physician, and give 

 him a salaried office, with duties as general adviser and guardian of the 

 athletic interests. Such a man, if properly qualified, would help the 

 students to a safer and better physical developmept than they now 

 get, and would, besides, soon drive away all trainers exercising im- 

 proper influences among them. 



In foot-ball there is no professional element. But it is charged 

 against the game that there is danger in it to life and limb. Undoubt- 

 edly it is a rough sport, but year by year it is becoming less dangerous 

 in consequence of the increasing strictness of the rules and the severity 

 of the penalties against foul play. In the match-games these rules are 

 generally so well observed that few accidents occur. In the games 

 between Yale and Princeton, which have always been the most hotly 

 contested, no man has been seriously hurt. It is a game which par- 

 ticularly requires courage, and is therefore a most manly game. It is 

 like a battle with the danger not all left out, but a battle in which 

 courage and self-possession not only secure victory but safety. With 

 all its dangers it is less dangerous to the players than the confinement 

 accompanying excess of study. 



One great evil connected with athletics, and not generally receiv- 

 ing public notice or animadversion, is the excess of feeling between 

 students of different colleges, occasioned by the intercollegiate con- 

 tests. This excess of feeling seems akin to excessive class-feeling 

 already noticed. It is partly due, no doubt, to the youthfulness of the 

 parties. It is seldom entertained by the contestants. It is a strange 

 fact that such feeling does not appear to exist between professional 

 clubs, nor between professional and amateur clubs. In this matter, 

 therefore, it would seem that the students might learn a good lesson 

 from "professionals." 



What the condition of the college would be without a system of 

 athletics is a question already partly answered by what has been said in 

 meeting the charges against the system. We can understand, also, the 

 effect of abolishing the present system by calling to mind the disorders 

 reported in colleges in which no such system is allowed to exist. The 

 revolts against authority and the great disorders between classes now 

 occur with the most frequency not at colleges which have the great- 

 est number of students and the most extensive athletic organizations, 

 but at the colleges in which the students either are not able or are not 

 allowed to establish such organizations. The disorders which used to 

 occur in New Haven thirty or even twenty-five years ago ought to 

 convince any candid man that, however great the present evils of col- 

 lege-life are with athletics, the past evils without athletics were worse. 

 On one occasion in those " good old times," in consequence of a con- 

 flict between students and town boys, a cannon was brought before the 



VOL. XXIV. 38 



