The Virginia enterprise. [volume] (Virginia, St. Louis County, Minn.) 1893-19??, 1905-09-08

r. Households Athletics Have Super
" seeded Splitting Wood and Other
-. Homely Tasks-Why Most Moth
els Disapprove Of Football-Chil-
dren Often Too Tenderly Nurtured
ri. -Gymnastic Training in Reason,
as Important as the A, B, C's.
BY MARGARET E. SANGSTER
Copyright, 1905, by Joseph B. Bowles.)
Football, baseball, basket ball, hur-
die races, high jumps, feats of skill
all kinds are having the right of way
to-day. We talk about them with
kindling eyes. They form the staple
of our breakfast table discussions.
Everybody reads the reports in the
newspapers, everybody rushes to see
the games, everybody praises, crit
1cises, shouts for ~gladness or groans
for vexation, according as the people
he or she cares for lose or win
We are more and mere clarifying
athletics. To hear us, one would
fancy that our universities existed,
not to make scholars, but to send
forth runners and racers and cham
pions in the football field. The old
proves of knights armed cap-a-pie,
who met in tilt and tournament in
the middle ages, is at present trans
ferred to the gymnasium and the open
plain, where we'll matched parties con-
tend in stubborn fight.
Mr.. Carnegie has put himself on
,record as, on the whole, discounting
athletics in favor of scholarship. 1t
was time that somebody took this
ground, for though sport and recrea-
! ton have their place, they are by no
means all of life.
First and foremost, they are often
overdOne. The young man whose
, splendid development Of chest and
, muscle, whose various achievements
are so extraordinary, sometimes uses
up his physical capital too lavishly.
His heart is unequal to the strain put
on it. The strength that should have
suficed for a lifetime is drained by
the continual exertions that are Incl
, dental to athletic distinction, and on
, occasion it gives out. In the long run
, the athlete of college days is not the
strong man of middle life, and an
athletic youth is no pledge of old age
A sound mind in a sound body was
the ideal of the ancients. 1t is what
we mcEt need to meet the demands
, of the moderns
A weak sickly. effete body that can
and cf~ ~ =,
| like house out of repair, with fall
ing chimneys and leaking roof, is to
be regarded as great misfortune
1t is more than calamity. Always
; it is an embarrassment. Often it is
sin. In these days of advanced sci
ence, those who come into the world
with Inherited tendencies to disease
may triumph over them if they will
use the means and live by hygienic
rules. Air, exercise, food, sleep, are
the remedies Nature provides against
feebleness and frailty Nobody should
be i'll who can help it, and much can
be done to help it in most cases. We
may be well if we choose.
| Over-exercise is as perilous as none
at ALL The strongest swimmer may
abuse his skill. The swiftest runner
may run too far.
| Athletics have superseded to some
: extent, in some places, the respectable
! and less exciting business of work
ing around the house and door yard
| The sons of the family, lads between
Is and 20, used to do the daily chores,
! fill the tanks that called for stfen-
uous pumping, drive the lawn mower
chop the wood, groom the horses and
weed the garden. They still lend a
hand when the family finances COM
pei them to do so, but as money is
more plentiful than once, it is less
J and less the fashion for boys and
| young men to be serviceable about
! the home. They do not see the neces-
sity. Economy is not a popular vir-
tue. Splitting wood aad attending to
a furnace are not picturesque modes
| taking exercise. Our sons, and for
| that matter some of our daughters,
look with shy disfavor on homely
household tasks, while they expend
! energy and fervor by wholesale on
the games they care for
Few mothers entirely approve of
the risks their sons take in sport To
bring your boy safely through the
reefs and shoals of early childhood,
through mumps and measles and
chicken-pox and whocping cough, and
then have him manned and disfgured
in football, is heart-braaking per-
Torrance. The boy, carried of the
field with a broken knee cap, is .buoyed
! up by the plaudits of his fellows, but
| in the dreary days on crutches, those
! plaudits will bring him little comfort
The accidents that march in the wake
! of athletics are appalling, and the
! notifying reflection that they are to
J be set down on the balance sheet of
life under the heading of absolute
b.