ing; but
it seems to me that most of us were playing something in the fresh air
the greater portion of the time. However, I have always been a great
believer in manly sports and I wish to continue to be.

When my boy entered college I remember telling him kindly but
explicitly that it was a costly matter to send him there, and that I
should expect him to make the most of the opportunities for improvement
which were offered him. I knew that he was not especially clever at
his books like his brother David, yet at the same time I had set him
down as a sensible, wide-awake fellow with at least an average amount
of brains and with plenty of tact and common sense. It was my hope
that he would devote himself to political economy and mathematics, in
which case I should try and find an opening for him after graduation
with the firm of Leggatt & Paine, our leading bankers. I expected, of
course, that he would continue to take a suitable amount of exercise,
to keep himself in good trim; row on the river and not altogether
renounce base-ball. Indeed, although I was aware that collegiate
sports were a much more serious tax on a student's time than in my day,
I should not have seriously demurred had he been selected to row on the
University crew or play on the University base-ball nine. I should
have greatly preferred to have him steer clear of both; still, I try to
remember that I was once his age myself, and I am given to understand
that the rivalry between the several colleges in these matters is more
intense than ever. There was a time when nothing seemed to me of such
vital interest as whether Harvard or Yale won the boat race. The
Darwinian theory paled in comparative importance beside it. Indeed, I
still take more interest in it than it deserves, perhaps.
Nevertheless, I took pains to impress upon Fred that his studies were
to be his first consideration.

We did not play foot-ball in college when I was there, which was the
reason, perhaps, why I assumed that it was a boy's game, to be shuffled
off with other purely youthful sports when one became a dignified
student. I had heard here and there the statement that it was a rough
game, which did not impress me very much, recalling as I did my own
hacked shins. It was not until I read my friend Horace Plympton's
letter to the _Evening Times_, that my attention was particularly
called to the matter. Horace seemed to have lashed himself into a
perfect fury on the subje