by all means, although it may
justly be termed "rough and dangerous" for young men who do not know how
to play. It is not dangerous for those who do know the game and have
been trained to take part in it. Yet under no circumstances is it a
sport adaptable to evening clothes and kid gloves. If it were, we should
not care for it as we do. But bicycle-racing--and I am speaking now
essentially of in-door racing on a flat floor--is just as dangerous for
experts as it is for the ignorant and the novice. More so, perhaps; for
a novice's timidity will protect him from any attempt at riding through
an iron girder. The dim light of an armory makes it difficult for a
rider to judge angles and distances, especially when the track he is
circling is marked solely by a chalk line on a slippery floor. In an
open field, on a cinder track well rolled and well fenced, it is a very
different matter. Should a rider fall there, his injuries are limited to
a few scratches at the worst, and surgical assistance is unnecessary in
such a case. As to sprinting and putting the shot on a board floor,
these events are more incongruous than harmful. And if custom has made
them popular as in-door sports, I am willing to defer to the dictum of
Custom, until Experience shall step in and pronounce her verdict.

Another good rule adopted at this same meeting of the I. S. A. A. was
that proposed by Syme of Barnard, to prevent, when possible, two boys
from the same school starting in the same trial heat. It is,
unfortunately, not uncommon for two boys from the same school to
deliberately pocket a rival runner, especially in events like the 220,
the half-mile, and the mile. Such practices are beneath the dignity of
amateurs, and it is somewhat of a disgrace that any rule should be
required to prevent it. But if the managers were forced to recognize
this unsportsmanlike tendency on the part of even a few contestants, it
is to their credit that they adopted measures to put a stop to it.
Nothing in sport to-day is more important than to maintain a broad and
honest spirit of fair play, for without such a spirit interscholastic
athletics, and every other kind of athletics, are bound to deteriorate.

While speaking of this, I am reminded of rumors current in Brooklyn to
the effect that one of the schools in the Long Island Interscholastic
League has secured track athletes and baseball players by offering them
half tuition, and in one case free tuition, as an induc