Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1884-07-31
Social Character OF Athletic Sports.

Bodily exercises imply society and
social disposition; for if a solitary per-
son, like Robinson Crusoe or Enoch Ar
den, were to be found daily practicing
with the bars and rings, we should sus-
pect him, not of social, but of ominous-
~ selfish and morbid tendencies. The
pleasure of being strong lies in the fact
that others are strong around us, there
by furnishing us with companionship
and competition, which are the fuel of
life. Health is, or should be, incident
al to this pleasure; that is 10 say, |
question the propriety of making health
the deliberate object of exercise. Let
it come if it will; but it will come none
the slower if you forbear TO be on the
watch for it. To make yourself strong
for the sake of your private health is
the analogue of obeying the decalogue
for the sake of your private crown;
there Is something unpleasantly unsym-
pathetic about it. But be strong sim
ply because mankind at large will be
better if all men become physically
more efficient, and the other blessings
shall be added to you. Moreover, apart
from the stimulus of example and fell
| lowship, it is doubtful whether one man
in twenty will take the trouble regular
ly to exert himself Unless theie be
some motive outside himself he will
soon cease to think it worth while. Dr.
Winship used to say that he never would
| have made himself the man he was but
for the purpose he had formed tothrash
a certain offensive upper-class man in
college; and Mr. William Blaikie began
his athletic career an apparently hope
| less consumptiye. DIR. Winship lifted
| three thousand pounds, and Mr.. Blaikie
pulled stroke of the Harvard crew in
their great race with Yale; but it would
| be useless to tell me that the desire to
thrash man or to heal a diseased lung
| had more than the minutest share in
bringing these results about. If it had
not been for the gymnasium, with its jol-
| ly society of Jealous and emulouS young
| gymnasts, Winship would never have
| lifted his own weight, and Blake would
| have been, at best, a valetudinarian.
| The fame of the Olympic and Isthmian
games still echoes in our ears; but it was
not the games that made Greece 90 to
see them nit was Greece going see them
| that made the games. In the same
way have noticed that the university
crews OF Oxford and Cambridge, for
example, profess to be superbly indif-
ferent as to whether the British public
on the day of the race lines the river
bank from Putney to Mortlake; indeed,
they have lately undertaken to intimate
that they would prefer to have the pub
lie keep away. But no one knows bet
ter than they themselves that, were the
public some day TO take them at their
word, not only would the crews never
ind the energy to get themselves into
| condition, but, were that difficulty over
come, they would never find it in their
hearts to pull further than Hammer
smith Bridge, near which there is very
good ale house. | do not wish, howey-
er, to run this theory into the ground;
only wish to indicate that athletics are
essentially popular pursuit, conducive
to good citizenship, and the cultivation
of which, therefore, good citizenship
should imply.-Jalidn Hawthorne, IN
Harper''s Magazine for august.