Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/743



WRITE not as an expert, but rather as an intelligent sympathizer. I have been for twenty-five years an instructor in Yale College, and believe thoroughly in its traditions of work and scholarship. From my youth up having been fond of athletic exercises, and as a student always ready to participate in them, I can write of them understandingly. I have known personally all the captains of the Yale football teams for the past twelve years, most of them intimately. With one exception they have all been my pupils. One of them was a member of my own family. Having exceptional knowledge of the subject, which the possession of these opportunities grants to but few men, I deem it a duty to put in permanent form the results of my observations. I have already done this with reference to the subject of athletics in general. In this article I wish to confine my attention to the game of football.

I hope to prove that with all its faults it is one of the best forms of athletic sport which can be invented; that by no other game or exercise practiced by young men are the players themselves so much benefited as by football; that the colleges ought to be as much interested in keeping it up as are the most enthusiastic football players themselves; that the public, who have boys to educate, ought to acquaint themselves with the subject. Watching the games when possible, they ought not to allow themselves to be beguiled into condemnation of the sport by