The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-06-25
COLLEGE LIFE IN THE FoRT1Es

DSPiSICu uy G. " iSI nhllCIlell, lIlS E1Ill- nent Physician and Author.
 My own class was graduated in 1S4S. The college was then hardly more than a day school. In the simple yellow succeed building on Ninth street we had three morning recitations, and there our distinctive collegiate life end ed. The change from that day to this has been great indeed, but am clear in my mind that in some respects you have lost out of the college life that which it were better to have kept.
 Our sports were less violent than yours. and they took up no such time as now take from the more important matter of intellectual development, We had no football or races, or contests with other universities but we played cricket, and played it well, too, and rowed an the river and spared with the once famous Tom Barrett Neither were we photographed in the daily papers alongside of Rocky Ned" and the Virginia Bantam" We had no game which necessitated the attend ahce the attendance of a physician. Our elders did, in those naughty days on rare occasions indulge in this luxu- ry, but that was when they intended to inflict personal injury.
 It is needless to insist on what we missed and what, in consequence, my generation failed to be and to do--it is sadly interesting to speculate on what we might have been--for by this time you must all be aware that without col lege athletics no nation can long sur vive. Who can doubt that the disci- pline of the football field must have been terribly missed at~the Bloody Angle and on, Cemetery Hil?. We played hard in my college days, but we talked of our sports less than you do. On the other hand, we were enthusias- tic concerning the rising literary lights of Tennyson and Carlyle, and had, as take it, keener interest in the intel lectual life of the world and of the col lege than exists to-day.
 You, fear, care too little for your in- tellectual athletes and certainly do not decorate or publicly honor them or DOT tray them in your class records as you do the baseball teams. As I remember, we regarded our honor men with a cer- tain veneration and took such interest in our society debates as I hope still exists within the sacred walls of my own Philomathean. There were other differences; do not recall ever hearing Of bets on our cricket matches. Per haps, however, we may at times have been little vicious. There were, in fact, certain personal remarks it was not wise to make unless you felt willing to take off your coat back of the college. Nowadays the training in athletics is said to make this vulgar resort need less and co encourage such amiability as did not exist in the less polished life of my college years.
 It is rather late to say to a gra dua- ting class that athletics have to-day too large a place in the life and talk of college men, and that the intellectual athletes of your class, whom in future years you will delight to honor, will owe nothing to the football field or the race track. Athletic sorts are meant, as l see them, to insure that the body shall be made and kept sound, enduring sound, so as the better to enable men to meet the demands of our energetic life. A distinguished surgeon said to me last night that hundreds of men are to-day suffering and will continue more and more to suffer from the injuries re- ceived in football. If this be the result, are we not justified in asking that this attractive sport should be so modified as to free it from the unwholesome con- sequences which must affect the com potency of many active lives ?-Univer- sity of Pennsylvania Record.