occur to him, that he also might be as happy as a boy, if he lived more like one. What do most men know of the “wild joys of living,” the daily zest and luxury of out-door existence, in which every healthy boy beside them revels?—skating, while the orange sky of sunset dies away over the delicate tracery of gray branches, and the throbbing feet pause in their tingling motion, and the frosty air is filled with the shrill sound of distant steel, the resounding of the ice, and the echoes up the hillsides?—sailing, beating up against a stiff breeze, with the waves thumping under the bow, as if a dozen sea-gods had laid their heads together to resist it?—climbing tall trees, where the higher foliage, closing around, cures the dizziness which began below, and one feels as if he had left a coward beneath and found a hero above?—the joyous hour of crowded life in football or cricket?—the gallant glories of riding, and the jubilee of swimming?
The charm which all have found in Tom Brown’s “School Days at Rugby” lies simply in this healthy boy’s-life which it exhibits, and in the recognition of physical culture, which is so novel to Americans. At present, boys are annually sent across the Atlantic simply for bodily training. But efforts after the same thing begin to creep in among ourselves. A few Normal Schools have gymnasiums (rather neglected, however); the “Mystic Hall Female Seminary” advertises ridinghorses; and we believe the new “Concord School” recognizes boating as an incidental;—but these are all exceptional cases, and far between. Faint and shadowy in our memory are certain ruined structures lingering Stonehenge-like on the Cambridge “Delta,”—and mysterious pits adjoining, into which Freshmen were decoyed to stumble, and of which we find 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 our 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 our day,—but that was all. Yet earlier reminiscences of the same beloved Cambridge suggest deeper gratitude. Thanks to thee, W. W.,—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 half-holidays, unasked, for no other reason than that the skating is good and the boys must use it while it lasts?
Wo 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 exercise 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? We rejoice to have been a schoolmate of him who wrote
“The hours the idle schoolboy squandered The man would die ere he’d forget.”
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
