WHAT A GYMNASIUM MIGHT BE AND DO
most of them need it. For, though President Eliot will not find it so true as formerly, when he said that a majority of those entering Harvard, for instance, had "undeveloped muscles; a bad carriage; and an impaired digestion; without skill in out-of-door games; and unable to ride, row, swim or shoot"; still the number is too great; and will remain so, as long as it is true of even one, unless he is disabled. With all these finer houses and better tools, it is doubtful if the proportion of really first-class men physically, at any of the Universities, is greater than it was a generation ago. Fifteen-inch upper arms; twelve and a half inch forearms; and forty-five-inch chests are just as rare, relatively to the whole number of students, as they ever were. And this though there are more heavy ones now than then. Long-distance men, in every field of athletics, save cycling, are almost unknown among us. We can go, but we do not stay. And no judge, scrutinizing the picked men at an ordinary athletic meet, will say that we are built to stay.
At entering the student is usually inerect; and needs "setting up" quite as much as the newly arrived "pleb" at West Point. But does he get it? At some places, Yes; at others, No. If from good stock, stronger than the average; and it happens to be a year when there is much interest in athletics; the rowing-men, or the baseball or football fellows, will be after him. If they capture him, he will get plenty of work—more than enough—but in one single rut. If he knows something of the allurements of these sports; and desires to steer clear of them and be a reading man; still not to neglect his body; he is at a loss how to go to work. He finds a house full of apparatus, and does not know how to use it. He sees the boating and ball men hard at it, but on their hob-
113
