ruined structures lingering Stonehenge-like on the Cambridge "Delta," and mysterious pits adjoining, into which Freshmen were decoyed to stumble, and of which it is reported that vestiges still remain. Tradition spoke of Dr. Follen and German gymnastics; but the beneficent exotic was transplanted prematurely, and died. The only direct encouragement of athletic exercises which stands out in my memory of academic life was a certain inestimable shed on the "College Wharf," which was for a brief season the paradise of swimmers, and which, after having been deliberately arranged for their accommodation, was suddenly removed, the next season, to make room for coal-bins. Manly sports were not positively discouraged in those days, — but that was all. Yet earlier reminiscences of the same beloved Cambridge suggest deeper gratitude. Thanks to thee, William Wells, first pioneer, in New England, of true classical learning, last wielder of the old English birch, for the manly British sympathy which encouraged to activity the bodies, as well as the brains, of the numerous band of boys who played beneath the stately elms of that pleasant play-ground! Who among modern pedagogues can show such an example of vigorous pedestrianism in his youth as thou in thine age? and who now grants halfholidays, unasked, for no other reason than that the skating is good and the boys must use it while it lasts? It is safe to cling still to the belief, that the Persian curriculum of studies to ride, to shoot, and to speak the truth- is the better part of a boy's education. As the urchin is undoubtedly physically safer for having learned to turn a somerset and fire a gun, perilous though these feats appear to mothers, so his soul is made healthier, larger, freer, stronger, by hours and days of manly exer cise and copious draughts of open air, at whatever risk of idle habits and bad companions. Even if the balance is sometimes lost, and play prevails, what matter? It was a pupil of William Wells who wrote "The hours the idle school-boy squandered Only keep in a boy a pure and generous heart, and, whether he work or play, his time can scarcely be wasted. Which really has done most for the education of Boston, - Dixwell and Sherwin, or Sheridan and Braman? Should it prove, however, that the cultivation of active exercises diminishes the proportion of time given by children to study, it is only an added advantage. Every year confirms the conviction, that our schools, public and private, systematically overtask the brains of the rising generation. We all complain that Young America grows to mental maturity too soon, and yet we all contribute our share to continue the evil. It is but a few weeks since the New York newspapers were shouting the praises of a girl's school, in that city, where the appointed hours of study amounted to nine and a quarter daily, and the hours of exercise to a bare unit. Almost all the Students' Manuals assume that American students need stimulus instead of restraint, and urge them to multiply the hours of study and diminish those of out-door amusements and of sleep, as if the great danger did not lie that way already. When will parents and teachers learn to regard mental precocity as a disaster to be shunned, instead of a glory to be coveted? One could count up a dozen young men who have graduated at Harvard College, during the last twenty years, with high honors, before the age of eighteen; and it is possible that nearly every one of them has lived to regret it. "Nature," says Tissot, in his Essay on the Health of Men of Letters, "is unable successfully to carry on two rapid processes at the same time. We attempt a prodigy, and the result is a fool." There was a child in Languedoc who at six years was of the size of a large man; of course, his mind was a vacuum. On the other hand, Jean Philippe Baratier was a learned man in his eighth year, and died of apparent old age at twenty. Both were monstrosities, and a healthy childhood would be equidistant from either. One invaluable merit of out-door sports is to be found in this, that they afford the best cement for childish friendship. Their associations outlive all others. There is many a man, now perchance hard and worldly, whom one loves to pass in the street simply because in meeting him one meets spring flowers and autumn chestnuts, skates and cricket-balls, cherry-birds and pickerel. There is an indescribable fascination in the gradual transference of these childish companionships into maturer relations. It is pleasant to encounter in the contests of manhood those whom one first met at football, and to follow the profound thoughts of those who always dived deeper, even in the river, than one's own efforts could attain. There is a certain governor, of whom I personally can remember only that he found the Fresh Pond heronry, which I vainly sought; and in memory the august sheriff of a neighboring county still skates in victorious pursuit of me, (fit emblem of swift-footed justice!) on the black ice of the same lovely lake. My imagination crowns the Cambridge poet, and the Cambridge sculptor, not with their later laurels, but with the willows out of which they taught me to carve whistles, shriller than any trump of B fame, in the happy days when Mount Auburn was Sweet Auburn still. Luckily, boy-nature is too strong for theory. And truth demands the admission, that physical education is not so entirely neglected among us as the absence of popular games would indicate. It is very possible that this last fact proceeds partly from the greater freedom of fieldsports in this country. There are few New England boys who do not become familiar with the rod or gun in childhood. Perhaps, in the mother country, the monopoly of land interferes with this, and that game laws, by a sort of spontaneous pun, tend to introduce games. Again, the practice of match-playing is opposed to our national habits, both as a consumer of time, and as partaking too much of gambling. Still, it is done in the case of "firemen's musters," which are, we believe, a wholly indigenous institution. I have known a few cases where the young men of neighboring country parishes have challenged each other to games of base-ball, as is common in England; and there was a recent match at football between the boys of the Fall River and the New Bedford High Schools. And within a few years regattas and cricket-matches have become common events. Still, these public exhibitions are far from being a full exponent of the athletic habits of our people; and there is really more going on among us than this meagre pentathlon" exhibits. 66 Again, a foreigner is apt to infer, from the more desultory and unsystematized character of our out-door amusements, that we are less addicted to them than we really are. But this belongs to the habit of our nation, impatient, to a fault, of precedents and conventionalisms. The English-born Frank Forrester complains of the total in difference of our sportsmen to correct phraseology. We should say, he urges, "for large flocks of wild fowl, of swans, a whiteness, of geese, a gaggle, of brent, a gang, of duck, a team or a plump,- of widgeon, a trip, of snipes, a wisp, — of larks, an exaltation. The young of grouse are cheepers,—of quail, squeakers, — of wild duck, flappers." And yet, careless of these proprieties, Young America goes "gunning" to good purpose. So with all games. A college football-player reads with astonishment Tom Brown's description of the very complicated performance which passes under that name at Rugby. So cricket is simplified; it is hard to organize an American club into the conventional distribution of point and cover-point, long slip and short slip, but the players persist in winning the game by novel groupings and daring combinations. This constitutional independence has its good and evil results, in sports as elsewhere. It is this which has created the American breed of trotting horses, and which won the Cowes regatta by a mainsail as flat as a board. But, so far as there is a deficiency in these respects among us, this generation must not shrink from the responsibility. It is unfair to charge it on the Puritans, They are not even answerable for Massachusetts; for there is no doubt that athletic exercises, of some sort, were far more generally practised in this community before the Revolution than at present. A state of almost constant Indian warfare then created an obvious demand for muscle and agility. At present there is no such immediate necessity. And it has been supposed that a race of shopkeepers, brokers, and lawyers could live without bodies. Now that the terrible records of dyspepsia and paralysis are disproving this, one may hope for a reaction |