The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1893-12-26

players play both football and baseball.
so that the tension OF the Thanksgiving
game must be continued for the baseball
season How can junior or senior in one
or our leading universities train, practice
and play ball in this way. and have time.
strength or thought for the work for which
his parents send him TO college? Legiti-
mate temperate athletics. manly struggles
for the glory of his college under the
auspices or his college. ana under the ap-
proving gaze OF the college world OF stu
dents, professors and friends-this Is I'M
struggles as those OF the Thanksgiving
gS-me are to take place. let them be be-
tween graduate students or professionals
hippodrome athletics is the unfair position
TO which scholarship is assigned as re-
suit. A prominent professor I'm leading
college remarked after the last Thanksgiv-
ing game that If one Of his students had
discovered the law of gravitation the per-
but lightly esteemed. The Stinnecke Prize
men, the Lynde Debaters, the De Forest
Medalists. the Latin Salutatorians, the Val
edictorans-when has any publication with
in or without the college walls thought IL
becoming TO award hundredth of the
recognition to these real heroes as is effu-
sively given to a member of a victorious
team? And so IL is coming to pass that the
plain people" of Abraham Lincoln's con-
Germ are being alenated from the colleges;
they can see neither sense nor reward in
the modern college heroisms. and the most
valuable element OF the colleges of the older
tfme-the middle class of boys-are found in
fewer numbers In our largest colleges. and
the colleges themselves are deploring the
absence OF earnestness the lowering of the
intellectual tone and the steady decrease
certainly in foremost universities-of
the number of young men who care 10 en-
ter the ministry. These things. let us in
sist. not due to football or baseball,
or boating. but to the virtual surrender OF
nothing for culture and little for
character. Some of the stanchest de-
tenders of football to-day are men who.
when in college. played only on academic
grounds, and in the presence only OF the
real college world. The anomalous thing
of a. game on Thanksgiving day mote the
In the blare of a crowd, half rabble and
half genteel, whose apparent legitimate re-
ceipts are $4,000. and whose illeeitimate
ceipts are $4,000 (and no one computes the
gains and losses in the straight gam
men who admired or played football in the
early part of the last decade, and who,
vocating athietics as they are. There are are
good many OF us-fathers, teachers and
lovers of boys-who mourn the decadence
ofs family reunions on THANKSGIVING day,
those calm and helpful ingatherings of the
absent ones under the roof of the dear old
great show '" Which our eoiege" team lis is
TO give in some large city. The father may
doubt the, propriety of substituting the
game for the family reunion; but just now
he wishes TO make his boy happy, and there
is no room to doubt what will make his boy
game, or spend the time before and after
the game In the city, with their fathers.
And Ar these boys have really been Sorgottesn
debated modern athletics during the past
three months. Few of us pause to reflect
boys that attend boarding schools in prep
aration for college. There are not
less than 10000 bows under
eighteen years of age in boarding schools
within a half-day'S travel of New York
city. 1t is the almost universal custom OF
the parents Of these boys, in ignorance OF
the temptations TO which they will be ex-
poed: to grant them permission to spend
the thanksgiving recess of from three TO
five days in or near New York city, the
chief if not the only purpose of the boys
being to witness the great game. In their
youth and inexperence they are filched by
spectators in seats, they are exposed to
the evils of city hotels. they witness the
gambling, drinking, rowdyism and worse
sins of their elders, and return their
schools physically and morally injured. The
current of these evils is strong enough TO
bear along even good boys. 1t is to no pur-
pose that the school demonstrates with par
ents, who insist that they can trust" their
sons. for persistent opposition by the school
leads in due time to the selection OF school
not so Suspicious of boys. These schools
are an integral part of the educational sys-
TEN Of our country and have a fair claim
upon the colleges for such influences as
shall at least not harm the schools. These
great games in the metropolis are pervert-
the end bring to the colleges fresh
men whose contribution to the college world
hastens the further decline OF its moral and
scholarly character
The time is ripe to appeal to the faculties
and trustees of Yale and Princeton TO
abolish all games I'm our large cities and
on religious holidays The public press
and parents should bear in mind that
agreements are made for these great games
during the winter months, and that all
proper influences should be exerted now TO
prevent the continuance of such Chris
tianized heathensm as the Thanksgiving
game. We have had TO do primarily with
two OF noblest colleGes-Yale and
Princeton-whose patrons, professors and
trustees are Christian people. and will not
s.01r NIT QV-rl "a
matter which threatens the best interests
of those young men who are 10 exert IN
the near future a controlling influence In
the State and church