Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 61.djvu/557

Rh between them; the one supplements the other. Every participator in field sports should bring to his games a body well developed by judicious gymnastic training. On the other hand the trained gymnast is entitled to the peculiar delights and rewards of athletic games.

There is in the minds of many people a natural and reasonable fear that an enthusiasm for athletics involves a loss of interest in scholarship, in the high ideals of the spirit and in the details of a chosen course of study. It is feared that even when one does not lose his interest in study in consequence of his interest in athletics, he must suffer a loss of the time which athletics require. I doubt if any of these fears are well grounded. There is great economy of time in spending a proper amount of it in healthful, invigorating exercise; and again there is a great waste of time in lingering and poring long over one's books. On this point I can speak from considerable experience and observation. Again and again I have felt it my duty to order students to close their books and go out for exercise or for a game. The physical ills that students suffer from as a rule arise from too little exercise, not from too much.

Says Dr. Mitchell, of Philadelphia, in a little book labeled 'Wear and Tear': 'A proper alternation of physical and mental labor is fitted to insure a lifetime of wholesome and vigorous intellectual exertion.'

Again he says: 'Eat regularly and exercise freely, and there is scarce a limit to the work you may get out of the thinking organs.' Mental action is a distinctly physical process. Without the free circulation of blood in the brain there can be neither thought nor sensation, emotion nor ideas, and the quality of the mental action is largely dependent upon the quality of this supply of blood. Here then seems to lie the solution of this vitally important problem. We succeed best not by diminishing the amount of brain work, but by so regulating the manner of our lives as to make that amount of work harmless. The time we spend in judicious and absorbing exercise is not lost.

Will you pardon me for drawing upon my personal experience? I am old enough to draw some safe conclusions as to the immediate and permanent value of moderate athletics.

When I entered Harvard there was no gymnasium, no baseball, no Rugby football, no athletics of any kind except rowing, and that was too expensive for me. So I got on a while without any exercise. I had always been accustomed to an active life on a farm, and I was soon in a bad way. Fortunately my people became alarmed and insisted upon my joining a boat club; so I joined a club near the end of my