224 The Hunting Field With Horse and Hound 



while they are in transit, but, like the rockets also, die in the 

 attempt ? 



Our boys and girls are forgetting how to play, the result 

 must be in America as it has been in Spain and France, a 

 nervous, excitable, hysterical race of effeminate men and 

 women. 



Again at most American Colleges the men who are able to 

 demonstrate professional abihty in their freshman year are 

 worked and coached to the utmost limit of their powers. There 

 is no place for a boy who wishes to become proficient at row- 

 ing, for instance, and who does not want to make a drudge 

 and a slave of himself in order to keep his place. With every 

 other school and college field game it is the same. As we said 

 before, college athletics are not sport, they kill sport. 



So little do our boys and girls play that they are losing all 

 taste for it, unless they can win. They cannot stand defeat, it 

 breaks their hearts. Win or nothing. Chagrin, disgrace, 

 mortification is the only reward for the second best. This is 

 the greatest weakness in school and college sports in America 

 to-day. 



What is needed most is some form of schooling that will not 

 only grow thrifty, healthy animals with nerve, courage, health 

 and endurance, but such as will inculcate that best of all Chris- 

 tian virtues; i. e., living by the golden rule. Where and by 

 what form of training can these things better be accomplished 

 than an open-air play ground? Where and by what method 

 can we better teach our children how to play fair and take 

 defeat as well as victory, in a sportsmanlike manner? How, or 

 by what process can we develop in our children a guarantee 

 to health and long life, better than by that daily exercise in 

 gentlemanly and womanly games of field sports, which store 

 their systems with energy to carry them through the trials and 

 cares of hf e to a ripe old age ? We delve and slave and deny our- 

 selves many comforts to give our children the best training 



