It is not a good sign, or one that bodes well for our future, to see the play-grounds of our cities and towns so much neglected. You may stand on many of them for weeks together and not see one sharp, hot game of ball, or of anything else, where each contestant goes in with might and main, and the spectator becomes so interested as to hate to leave the fun. Foot-ball is a game as yet not at all general among us. Excellent is it for developing intrepidity and other manly qualities. The Duke of Wellington is reported to have said that her foot-ball fields were where England's soldiers were made. The short, hasty school recess in the crowded school-yard, or play snatched in the streets—these will never make robust and vigorous men. Yet these are too often all that our boys get, their cramped facilities for amusement soon bringing their natural result in small vital organs and half-developed limbs.
Many of our large cities are wretchedly off for play-grounds. Such open spaces as we have are fenced around, and have signs nailed all over them saying, "Keep off the grass!" at the same time forbidding games on the paths. One part of Boston Common used to be a famous play-ground; and many hard-fought battles has it seen at foot-ball, base-ball, hockey, and cricket. Many an active school-boy there has more than once temporarily bit the dust. But now rows of street lamps run through that part of the Common, and the precious grass must be protected at all hazards. New York city is scarcely better off. Central Park, miles away from the great majority of the boys in the city, is elegant enough when they get to it; but let them once set their bounds and start a game of ball, or hares-and-hounds, or try a little jumping or running, on any one of those hundreds of beautiful acres, save in one solitary field, and see how soon the gray-coats will be upon them. The Battery, City Hall Park, Washington Square, Union Park, Stuyvesant Square, and Madison Square are well located, and would make capital play-grounds, but the grass there is altogether too well combed to be ruffled by unruly boys. If a boy's cousin comes in from the country, and he wishes to try conclusions with him, he must confine his efforts to the flagged sidewalk or the cobble-stoned street, while a brass-buttoned referee is likely at any moment to interfere, and take them both into custody for disorderly conduct.
Again, outside of a boy's ball-playing, scarce one of his other pastimes does much to build him up. Swimming is excellent, but is confined to a very few months in the year, and is seldom gone at, as it should be, with any regularity, or with a competent teacher to gradually lead the boy on to its higher possibilities. Skating is equally desultory, because in many of our cities winters pass with scarcely a week of good ice. Coasting brings some up-hill walking, good for the legs, but does practically nothing for the arms.
So boyhood slips along until the lad is well on in his teens, and still, in nine cases out of ten, he has had nothing yet of any account in the way of that systematic, vigorous, daily exercise which looks directly to his weak points, and aims not only to eradicate them, but to build up his general health and strength as well. He gets no help in the one place of all where he might so easily get it—the school. So far as we can learn, no system of exercise has been introduced into any school or college in this land, unless it is at the military academy at West Point, which begins to do for each pupil, not alone what might easily be done, but what actually ought to be done. It will probably not be many years before all of us will wonder why the proper steps in this direction have been put off so long. Calisthenics are here and there resorted to. In some schools a rubber strap has been introduced, the pupil taking one end of it in each hand, and working it in a few different directions, but in a mild sort of way. At Amherst College enough has been accomplished to tell favorably on the present health of the student, but not nearly enough to make him strong and vigorous all over, so as to build him up against ill health in the future. At another college certain exercises, excellent in their way, admirable for suppling the joints and improving the carriage, have for some time been practised. But this physical work does not go nearly far enough, nor is it aimed sufficiently at each pupil's peculiar weak spot. It also neither reaches all the students, nor is it practised but a small part of the year. In the great majority of our schools and colleges, little or no idea is given the pupil as to the good results he will derive from exercise. The teacher's own experience in physical development is often more limited than that of some of his scholars.
The evil does not end here. Take the son of the man of means and refinement, a boy who is having given him as liberal an education as money can buy and his parents' best judgment can select, one who spends a third or more of his life in fitting himself to get on successfully in the remainder of it. That boy certainly ought to come out ready for his life's work, with not only a thoroughly-trained mind and a strong moral nature, but with a well-developed, vigorous physique, and a knowledge of how to maintain it, so that he may make the most of all his advantages.
But how often does this happen? Stand by the gate as the senior class of almost any college in this country files out from its last examination before graduation, and look the men carefully over. Ask your physician to join you in the scrutiny. If, between you two, you can arrive at the conclusion that one-half, or even one-third of them, have that vitality and stamina which make it probable that they will live till seventy, it will be indeed most surprising. A few of these young men, the athletes, will be well-developed, better really than they need be. But this over-development may be far from the safest or wisest course. Even though physically improved by it, it is not certain that this marked development will carry them onward through life to a ripe old age. But, with others indifferently developed, there will be many more positively weak. Such men may have bright, uncommon heads. Yes; but a bright and uncommon head on a broken down, or nearly broken down, body is not going to make half as effective a man in the life-race as a little duller head and a good deal better body.
But have these graduates had a competent instructor at college to look after them in this respect? Will some one name a college where they have such an instructor? or a school where, instead of building the pupil up for the future, more has been done than to insure his present health? One or two such there may be, but scarcely more than one or two.
Take even the student who has devoted the most time to severe muscular exercise—the rowing-man, not the beginner, but the veteran of a score or more of races, who has been rowing all his four college years as regularly and almost as often as he dined. Certainly it will not be claimed that his is not a well-developed body, or that his permanent health is not insured. Let us look a little at him and see. What has he done? He entered college at eighteen, and is the son, say, of a journalist or of a professional man. Finding, when he came to be fourteen or fifteen, that he was not strong, that somehow he did not fill out his clothes, he put in daily an hour or more at the gymnasium, walked much at intervals, took sparring lessons, did some rowing, and perhaps, by the time he entered college, got his upper arm to be a foot or even thirteen inches in circumference, with considerable muscle on his chest. Now this young man hears daily, almost hourly, of the wonderful Freshman crew—an embryotic affair as yet, to be sure, but of exalted expectations—and into that crew he must go at all hazards. He is tried and accepted. Now, for four years, if a faithful oar, he will row all of a thousand miles a year. As each year has, off and on, not over two hundred rowing-days in all, he will generally, for the greater part of the remaining time, pull nearly an equivalent daily at the rowing-weights. He will find a lot of eager fellows at his side, working their utmost to outdo him, and get that place in the boat which he so earnestly covets, and which he is not yet quite sure that he can hold. Some of his muscles are developing fast. His recitations are, perhaps, suffering a little, but never mind that just now, when he thinks that there is more important work on hand. The young fellow's appetite is ravenous. He never felt so hearty in his life, and is often told how well he is looking. He attracts attention because likely to be a representative man. He never filled out his clothes as he does now. His legs are improving noticeably. They ought to do so, for it is not one or two miles, but three or four, which he runs on almost every one of those days in the hundred in which he is not rowing.
Our young athlete has not always gone into the work from mere choice. For instance, one of a recent Harvard Freshman crew told the writer that he had broken down his eyes from over-use of them, and, looking about for some vigorous