save the ball? Five minutes of experience on a college foot-ball field would leave your Frankford or Manayunk or other local American English teams without clothes to continue the game in. The essence of the game that is now the vogue, the game of the American colleges, is its abandon, its thorough animality, and withal, its superior technique and its requirement of skill and endur ance. We are all animals—a little developed, it is true—but still animals, and after all we like to take risks ourselves, mental and physical, and we enjoy seeing others do it. Judging from the en thusiasm of the average foot-ball audience no de mand for reforM will come from that direction. The demand for reform will certainly not come from the students themselves. Inured to hardships after being half killed in the college rush, at the age when the delights of the physical facts of ex istence are most keen, the student, well trained, supple, lithe, with mind and muscle intent, will have none of your wooden contests, but flings him self pell-mell into the contest with a vehemence seen nowhere else, save on the battlefield. The participants who walk, whether limping or not, as demi-gods among their fellows, are warned or ter rified by nothing. Naught moves them; naught, the letters of alarmed parents, they simply play under assumed names; naught, the dire wounds and bruises of their companions, the surgeons are always handy ; naught, even the grave itself, they simply raise the cup and drink to one hero more 1 Naught moves them, and straightened out and sponged off, in they go till "time" is called. If, then, any reform is to come, the only factor that can effect anything is the faculty, whose Damocles' sword of prohibition has yet had little terror for the collegian. But whatever reform comes, if it should cut the life out of the game, it would not be the attraction it is now. Foot ball as you see it now, is about as you like it, Reformed, it would attract its tens where now it inspires its thousand I THE FREE LANCE. IN these busy days when all . the student's spare time is occupied with foot-ball interests we are apt to allow other important matter to drop out of sight, thus neglecting future interests for immediate gratification. All interest in the athletic grounds seems to have died out. They are now lying in a very incom plete condition. The track is not finished and as it now is, is in a very bad shape to be left over winter. The grounds are in a very bad state, and are scarce fit to practice on, let alone, to play a match game upon. They should be raked so as to remove all the small sharp stones that are so plenty over the sur face, and then levelled up so as to remove all un evenness. There has been practically nothing done towards the erection of 'a grand stand. Now is the time that the grand stand should be placed, for then the grading could be finished and whatever earth would be required to be removed could be handled now to such an advantage, as to cost only one half of what it wi4l later on. Don't let one idea run away with you, thus dwarfing in terests that are just as important as the one now occupying your minds. THE all absorbing sport this fall is football, but this is no reason why there will not be other athletics this year, nor is there aiy excuse for the men, who pursue other lines of athletics than football, for not practicing in their respective branches. s It is not probable that we shall do much out side of foot-ball this term although that depends altogether on the will of the students, but ther e will be an indoor athletic meeting next winter and the records which we have made should then be broken. This cannot be done by sitting down idly and not working. If we expect to do anything in athletics to make our college known, we must send men to intercollege sports, and to do this we must have athletes of whom we are not asham - ed. We have the material here as was fully dem- * *
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers