PHYSICAL TRAINING IN THE COLLEGES. 627 



sonality of the beloved director, Dr. Hitchcock. Some of the fea- 

 tures have been adopted at Cornell, where, however, the work has to 

 be combined with a system of military drill. 



The conditions at Harvard are quite different. The number to 

 be provided for runs up into the thousands. The system of electives 

 abolishes class lines, and forbids an arrangement of the schedule 

 which would leave certain hours free for exercise. It therefore 

 becomes next to impossible to group the men for graded instruction, 

 and prescribed work for the individual has been adopted as offering 

 the best solution of the problem. Dr. Sargent's series of widely 

 known and used pulley weights, adapted to a wide range of wants 

 and strengths, was devised to render more efficient the making and 

 carrying out of these prescriptions. While such a plan is admirably 

 suited to the needs of Harvard, it has been a mistake to introduce 

 it so extensively into schools where the age of the pupils renders more 

 constant supervision and direction desirable, and where instruction 

 can be given in graded classes, with the added incentive that comes 

 from working in company with others. The use of the so-called 

 developing appliances secures results which are corrective, and in a 

 measure hygienic, but they lack recreative and educational qualities. 



What has been said of Harvard will apply in the main to Yale, 

 though there the interest in athletics overshadows all else. At Bow- 

 doin a system of applied athletics, or competitive gymnastics, is the 

 distinguishing feature. The freshmen, in addition to their pre- 

 scribed corrective exercises, are given a preparatory discipline in 

 military tactics and Indian-club swinging. The sophomores receive 

 class instruction in the elements of boxing and wrestling, with sup- 

 plementary squad work on the fixed apparatus (horizontal bar, paral- 

 lel bars, flying rings, etc.), the squads being arranged in three groups 

 graded according to strength and skill. The juniors learn to fence 

 with single -stick and broadsword, and the seniors with foil and mask. 

 The results sought are clearly educational, as well as corrective and 

 hygienic. The work at Brown, though it differs in details, can be 

 referred to the same type, except that military drill is required in the 

 fall and spring of the freshman and sophomore years, under an 

 officer in the United States army. 



Where the work is required only during the early part of the 

 course, or for a term or two, it is in too many instances unworthy 

 to be called scientific or pedagogic. It is usually a combination of 

 prescribed exercises for the individual and memorized class drills 

 with light apparatus, together with optional use of the fixed ap- 

 paratus. It has, to be sure, some corrective and hygienic value while 

 it lasts, but is likely to grow monotonous, and is dropped before it 

 has accomplished much in the way of genuine training. It can not 



