222 The Hunting Field With Horse and Hound 



There is little time for reverie, however, as the trap has 

 already swung into St. Catherine's Lane and stopped. 



Each beagler hurries away to his own rooms as rapidly as 

 tired legs will travel, in time to don togs of a better sort and at 

 the stroke of seven o'clock sit down to dinner with his fellows 

 in the grand old College Hall. 



Affectionately, 



Your Son. 



It is greatly to be regretted that, while we have plenty 

 of athletics in our American schools and universities, we have 

 very little sport. 



School and college athletics in America, in the writer's 

 mind, are in a very lamentable condition. He speaks from an 

 intimate acquaintance with one of the largest universities in 

 this country, a university numbering over thirty-five hundred 

 students. Yet all the athletics of this great institution are 

 carried on by fewer than three hundred men or about one in 

 every group of twelve. In the so-called major sports only such 

 men as are able to demonstrate marked abihty in their fresh- 

 man or sophomore years are wanted. Many try but few are 

 chosen. Coaches have neither time nor inclination to bother 

 with any except the very best. We hear a lot about college 

 athletics, but "college athletics" are one thing, outdoor sports 

 for sport's sake are another. 



In the American university above referred to, the under- 

 graduates who do not qualify and go in for athletics are either 

 not at all interested therein, or are content to look on, bet on 

 the result or talk wise, like a lot of professional talent at a 

 horse race. At Oxford, England, there are also about thirty- 

 five hundred students. Every day throughout the collegiate 

 year from two thousand to twenty-five hundred of that number 

 are at their favourite outdoor sports the better part of each 

 afternoon. The result of these two systems of teaching is 



