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A Tale by Frederick Baron De La Motte Fouque. Translated into English by Abby L. Alger. Price 30c.

recent New York Election, entitled, "The Political Regeneration of New York."

Among the many interesting things found in Harper's Magazine

A. C. McClurg & Co., Chicago, for January are "Roden's Corner"

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Irish's "American and British Authors" is very popular both as a text-book for High Schools and Colleges, also for use in reading circles, literary clubs, etc. It has recently been adopted for use in the High Schools of Bucyrus, Bellaire, Galion, DeGraff, Pataskala. and many other places in Ohio.

The Educational Review opens its fifteenth volume and eighth year with the January number, which includes a striking paper in which Some Socialist and Anarchist Views of Education are contributed by Messrs. C. H. Matchett, Benjamin R. Tucker, Lucien Sanial and Miss Gertrude B. Kelly; and papers on School Building in New York City by C. B. J. Snyder, illustrated; Education in Hawaii by F. B. Dressler; etc. Other articles to appear early in 1898 are The Public School Community Life by Jas. K. Paulding; The Future of the Public School by E. J. James; Civil Service Reform and the Teaching Profession by C. W. Bardeen; Economy of High Wages for Teachers by John Davidson; Religious Instruction in American Schools by Levi Seeley; Public Education vs. State Education by Andrew S. Draper; American Graduate Schools by A. H. Edgren: The Educational System of California by E. E. Cates, etc., etc.

The frontispiece of the January number of the Arena is a portrait of Henry George, the prophet of the American Republic. The first article is Part II of "Freedom and

its Opportunities," by Governor John R. Rogers, of Washington, a fearless man of the people. The second article, "Our Interstate Protective Tariffs," by James J. Wait, is an able exposition of the evils of discriminating freight charges by the railways of the United States. "Our Friends the Enemy" is a contribution of great interest and value, by John D. Spence, of Toronto, on the relations, social and political, which ought to exist between the Canadians and the people of the United States. "Municipal Proprietorship" is ably discussed in the affirmative by Augustus L. Mason, ex-president of the Indianapolis Street Railroad Company. Mr. B. O. Flower's interesting and eloquent article is on "James G. Clark, the American Laureate of Labor." Helen Campbell, in a strong article on "American Domesticity," points out the reasons of the apparent decay of the domestic life, but draws a hopeful conclusion as to the future. the "Tributes to Henry George" four American poets lay their wreaths on the tomb of the man who saw and prophesied. The fiction of the number is a striking and amusing apologue by Charwin Lesbald, entitled "The Smelting of the Hon. Jerry Webb." "Mistletoe" is the subject of a beautiful nature sketch by Rev. Robert Blight. In "The Higher Civilization versus Vivisection," Rosa G. Abbott presents a humane and pathetic appeal against the unwarranted abuse of animals and the dissection of them alive in particular.

In

THE

OHIO EDUCATIONAL MONTHLY

ORGAN OF THE OHIO TEACHERS' ASSOCIATION.

VOL. XLVII.

FEBRUARY, 1898.

ANOTHER CHAPTER ON COLLEGE ATHLETICS.

THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY THE EVENTS OF THE LAST
FOOTBALL SEASON.

No. 2.

BY ALSTON ELLIS.

We are a pleasure seeking people, and in the chase for what we call happiness, are restive under wholesome restraint and do not like to have any duty held up before us as an admonition to a change of policy. We read the poet's statement that happiness is our being's end and aim, and devote too much time in grasping whatever goes before, evading our outstretched hand and luring us on into the paths of idleness and, mayhap, moral degradation. If a man is known by the company he keeps, he can also be guaged, morally, by the pleasures he seeks. Life must have some periods of recreation, some surcease from toil, anxiety, and nervous strain. It matters much, however, to one's moral well-being, how the mind is trained to view and define pleasure. The popular idea of pleasure is frequently connected with acts that smack of moral delinquency. Some can have no real zest for a pleasure that is found wholly without the domain of sin. Our children are left unaided by their elders in

the selection of their amusements and sports. Youthful excesses are winked at and excused by the plea that boys will be boys. "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy", we are told. Yes, and all play and no work makes Jack a fool. Rightly to blend mental and physical effort, on the part of the young, seems, in the light of events, to be a problem incapable of solution. There are pleasures that are universally recognized to be harmless and innocent, but our young people are not induced by their home and school training to seek and find therein the wholesome bodily recreation which their animality craves. The harmful sports, apparently because they are such, make the strongest appeal to the animal part of life, and the young are permitted to rush headlong into them with the approval of their elders, or but a mild protest from that quarter. The harmful sports are those that incite to idleness, those that demoralize and brutalize, and those that are secured and enjoyed at the expense of other peo

ple's just rights. of football, as it easily holds first

Of these the game is practiced to-day, rank. Basket ball comes as a good second. These are the college games that demoralize educational effort and loosen the moral fiber of those who participate in them. To excuse them under the plea that they afford proper physical development, is to war against sense and set at naught the teachings of experience. Five deaths within a month, on the "gridiron", is not a strong argument in favor of the physical development theory under which football practices are winked at. The list of the wounded is not given. The sporting club is the idler's heaven. The sporting tendency is at war with habits of economy and industry. If "manliness" is cultivated in the contests of brute strength, we are in sore need of a new definition of the term. Thomas Hughes wrote a helpful book on "The Manliness of Christ." Comment is unnecessary. The athletic club brings into college life that which wrecks just and necessary discipline and fathers sports that promote indecency, brutality, and cruelty. The members of the football team will not hesitate to stand in the presence of one another with naked bodies. When they put off their clothes they divest themselves of all sense of modesty and propriety. A selfrespecting man would be reluctant to show his naked body to a community of prairie dogs. These young men are kept in college at great pecuniary sacrifice to their parents, and any just recognition of what they owe to those at home would impel them to make the most of the opportunities which surround them. If there is abuse here, public sentiment, rather than law, must apply the remedy. It is more important that public sentiment should frown down football than that law should prohibit it.

The press is a strong molder of public sentiment, but it is also a moneymaking agency. It will not always educate aright, if it must do so at a pecuniary loss. There is hope, however, in the reflection that a newspaper will rarely put itself in the way of a strong, resolute, righteous tide of public senti

ment.

The football enthusiasts have filled the columns of the press with reports of games and pictures of participants. Yielding to what was supposed to be a strong demand, from a not inconsiderable part of the reading public, newspaper managers have devoted more and more space to reports of football exploits; but, even in so doing, they have recognized the eternal fitness of things by placing these reports in the columns given up to news of the prize rings, race course, and other events so keenly enjoyed by those who inhabit the "sporting world."

There is a manifest tendency on the part of parents and others interested to look more closely into the morale of the football craze. The noisy acclaim from certain quarters, which greets the feats of the athlete on the "gridiron" does not make inaudible that voice of warning that is reaching, with effect, the ears of sensible people. An earnest protest against the dangerous and brutal concomitants of the game, is met by an editorial in one of our papers, in which it is stated that "just now there seems to be a certain milk and water condemnation of football." That "milk and water" is becoming stronger, and football advocates have been forced within a defensive line that is daily contracting in length and dwindling in height.

It is quoted that some one said long ago that England's battles were won on the playgrounds of Eton and Harrow. Then follows the invincible logic that our battles must be won on the "grid

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iron." The time when brute force decided battles has gone by. A boy, armed with a repeating rifle, could stand his ground unscathed against the onset of Achilles and Hector combined. It was not much effort for David to slay Goliath. The mightiest pullback, holdback, or catchback of the football team, with all his budding honors thick upon him, with bandaged limbs and bathed in arnica, would be no match, physically, for a reasonably strong and agile foe. Besides, it must not be forgotten that he is thrice armed who has his quarrel just; and there is not much justice, manliness, or decency in the average football conglomeration.

The only way to give promise of doing great things hereafter is to begin the performance of something worthy now. Fulfillment does not always step close enough to the footprints of promise. The young man who neglects his college duties for the "constant practice”, the "incessant practice", required of a member of the football team is not the one who can be relied on to fight his country's battles when duty calls him to her defence. The student who knows naught of filial obedience and respect, is not likely to make patriotic sacrifices for the public good, or show himself a respecter of lawful authority, hereafter. "As the twig is bent, the tree's inclined." The thoughtless, selfish fellow who uses his parents' money, obtained by the sweat of their faces, not in making the most of the educational opportunities about him, but in fostering a sporting spirit that is the promoter of idleness and lawlessness and at war with all noble and generous impulses is giving no evidence of future service to those of his own household, to struggling humanity within his reach, or to the state in her time of trial and need.

A student fails in class standing, owing to his senseless devotion to so

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called athletics. He becomes manly by neglecting duty and spending unprofitably the money his old gray-haired mother earned for his college support over the washtub and ironing board or by taking service as nurse or domestic in some neighbor's family. The “unexpected that happens" generally has its origin in reasonableness. The one in mind, as this account is given, sealed his devotion to sport, not by the sacrifice of life, but by the fracture of two ribs, and was carried to his room where he lay three weeks without attending a college exercise. His mother from the steams of the washtub hastened to his bedside. I looked at her wrinkled, tear-stained face and heard her say with choked utterance, "Doctor, I'd do anything for him." What sacrifice, think you, would her son the long-haired exponent of football and a believer in "gridiron" ethics make for the warm-hearted, devoted, self-sacrificing being who gave him existence and watched over his helpless infancy? "How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child!" A devoted sister secures a position in the public schools and sets apart half her earnings to the college support of her brother. With the rest of her salary she supports herself and her widowed mother. For more than two years that brother has frittered away time and money at college. In the front of the football team and at the tail of his class, he is cultivating the manliness that seems inseparably connected with certain phases of college athletics. These are not isolated or exaggerated instances of the effects of the game of football in demoralizing college work and loosening the moral fiber of students. Devotion to the game is a sure indication of lessened interest in legitimate college work. Lawless tendencies, easily suppressed before, become active and unblushing under the "col

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