COLLEGE ATHLETICS. 453 



class - feeling which is the active power in the disorders between 

 classes. It is at this point that the influence of the university organiza- 

 tions acts as a check. Since these organizations are composed of men 

 of all classes, it is impossible for all college to be enthusiastic for its 

 crew, team, or nine, without a common sympathy binding all the classes 

 together. Moreover, it is observable that the time of the year when the 

 athletic contests are not absorbing the attention of the college is the 

 very time when the disorders between classes and the persecutions of 

 freshmen are most prevalent. Besides, the captains of the university 

 organizations command their men to keep out of disorders, because 

 they know that they might lose their services if these men came under 

 the discipline of the college authorities. The writer has seen the cap- 

 tain of the University Foot-ball Eleven personally restraining his men 

 from participation in a " rush." Formerly it was the strong men who 

 incited and took the chief part in disoi'ders. Now all their interests 

 and all their efforts are against them. 



4. The system furnishes to instructors an opportunity of meeting 

 their pupils as men interested in a common good, without the chilling 

 reserve of the recitation-room. It does not require a great effort to 

 be a spectator of their contests. An interest in the contestants is a 

 very natural result of witnessing their struggles. The college officer 

 who gives a little of his time even to the boys' play soon finds his 

 sympathies widen, and, by learning from actual observation how young 

 men feel and think, becomes able to deal more wisely with those under 

 his charge, from a fuller knowledge of them. 



5. The power of the athletic contests to awaken enthusiasm ought 

 not to be held of small account. The tendency of academic life is 

 toward dry intellectualism. However desirable such a tendency may 

 be for those who are training to be investigators, there can be no ques- 

 tion that it is lamentable for a young man to begin life without 

 enthusiasm. It is not too much to say that in many a student, while 

 passing from freshman to the end of senior year, this spirit would 

 die for lack of culture were it not for athletics. There is training for 

 it in every contest witnessed. These contests affect graduates as 

 well as undergraduates, and go far toward accounting for the warm 

 interest which the alumni of all of the larger colleges feel in their 

 Alma Mater. 



6. The system of athletics, by its intercollegiate contests, brings 

 the students into a wider world. They are no longer " home-keeping 

 youths," " with homely wits." They measure themselves by other 

 standards than those they find in the limits of their own campus. 



In the next paper the Avriter proposes to discuss the accompanying 

 evils of the present system of college athletics, and to present some 

 statistics bearing upon the general subject. 



