The daily morning journal and courier., 1897-05-01
GENTLEMANLY FAILURES
WHAT ATHLETICS HATE DONE FOR
 ENGLISH MEN.

A Warming to Young AmericaDs-The
 Secret of SucCess-An Interesting Dis
 oussion by n Competent Authority.
 Forty, even thirty, years ago the young man who had passed through his
 public school with tolerable record
 was reasonably sure of decent berth
 it he went into commerce, or after talk
 ing fair degree at the university,
 would probably find a modest opening
 in one Of the professions. There was
 steady market for his respectable at
 tainments. The number of muscular young Christians turned out on the
 world every year from the public
 schools was strictly limited-a few
 hundreds per annum. Now there are
 many thousands of them. The begin
 ming of the glut is due to Dr, Arnold,
 whose famous work at Rugby was
 quickly initiated by a score of Organi-
 zing headmasters, who either trans
 formed the languishing grammar
 schools of country towns into great es-
 tablishments with several hundred pu-
 pills apiece, or invested proprietary en-
 terprses with a corporate and quasi public character. This process has been carried on by another generation
 of teachers, and at the present time 1t would be difficult to point to an Eng
 fish county which does not possess half
 a dozen institutions where the instruc-
 tion and general training are substan- tially identical with those administered at Our Colleges of Eton and Winches- ter" as mentioned in the prayer book. Before Dr. Arnolds day, and for some time afterWard, these privileges had been almost restricted to the sons of parents who belonged by birth to the upper or upper middle class, or had struggled up to that rank Now the
 middle class receives public school education and we have a generation of young gentlemen out of all numerical proportion to the general of our popula- l tion. Grown and growing up We see
 them everywhere; bright-eyed, clean
 limbed, high-minded, ready for any thing, and fit for nothing-unemploy or wearing out their best years In
 third-rate situations. Walk along Cheapside, and every third fellow you meet in a silk hat you may recognize as bred upon the Arnold tradition trained, as part of his nature. to tell the truth and keep his nails clean. Excel lent habits, both of them; but not es- sentials of success in the city of Lon don.
 The time was, it has been said, when | a demand existed for the public-school type. It had it's value in the city when l it was less common. There were some
 houses which liked to have a show | partner or a personal representative he inspired their more fastidious clients with confidence. But that day has gone by, or all but gone, and a salary now is nicely adjusted to the service a man can render his firm and the busi- ness he can introduce. The ordinary
 merchant is no longer impressed with an athletic record. He does not ask whether the candidate for a stool in his | office is the same redoubtable youngS- | ter with the left-hand twist from the | off, who took five Wickets at Lords last summer, kicked the odd goal for the Old Muggletonians in the final round | for the cup, or electrified the Uuiversi-
 ty of Oxford by stroking the Skimmery | Torpid head of the river. Now and again, it is true, real eminence in games
 may come in usefully. There is a gen | uine camaraderie among athletes | Old-fashiOned investors may still be | found who like paying their commits sions to a broker whose name has been | honored in "The Field" Here and l there, perhaps, a solicitor is so satura- | ted with the traditions of his boyhood | that he will carry a brief to the cham | bers of Q distinguished cricketer in l Lincoln's Inn, just for the pleasure of | making his acquaintance and showing | him off afterward at dinner party of | jolly old buffers like himself. But the normal dispenser of legal patronage en- tertains a prejudice in favor of counsel ! who have found time to pick up little | law, and. the average bull bear or stag | fights shy of the high-class firm who | stand out for the regulation one-eighth | per cent. He goes to that business-like Mir. Jacobs, who will accept one-six- 1 teenth, and deserts him in turn wher | he hears of the still more enterprisne MT. Levy, just set up, who will take | one thirty The prestige of the Tom Brown type has passed away, now | that so much of the most important
 business has come under the control ot | foreign or half-foreign magnates, whC
 neither admire nor understand what i:
 an essentially. one might add an az
 gressively. British product.
 From a fairly wide acquaintance
 among contemporaries between
 thirty and forty years of age-whC
 have respectively succeeded or failed il
 making their mark, the writer is in | clined to regard the disappointed ones
 as almost, though not quite, identica
 with those who gave the best of theil young time to athletics, and treated | lessons and lectures as "a kind of para
 sitic growth upon modern educationa | institutions" Among" the happy few
 exceptions to that classification there
 is not one who, on taking to. work, die
 not give up play.
 But if lad has "done his lessons" il
 an undergraduate attends his lecture:
 and reads his bOoks,' how can ht spend his spare time more healthily
 than in some outdoor sport? Well, tn,
 answer is simple enough. He vii leave his school or college knowing jus
 the same things as all his fellows-f l Ii+tin Y,,0ra than most Of a