marked himself as a leader of men. Besides, no man can thoroughly succeed in football who plays for himself alone. There are few more searching tests of men's motives and spirit. This is why class officers chosen from football players are almost invariably good men. On the gridiron field their classmates learn who have self-control, courage, endurance, minds quick in emergencies, devotion to class and college, and who play to the grand-stand, and unless they can be spectacular are of no use.

"I dwell on football because its hold on a college is often misunderstood by persons who think of it merely as a brutal, tricky and sadly exaggerated pastime, and not, in spite of its evils, as a test of generalship, physical and moral prowess, quickness of body and mind; and because it is a good illustration of a visible and practical purpose (crossing the enemy's goal line), fired by an ideal (the honor and glory of a college)."

Doesn't this give us a pretty good reason why a normal young man should allow football to engross him for the time being, even if his comprehension of the law of diminishing returns does suffer a little thereby? And isn't there some room to wonder whether he hasn't exalted rather than degraded it from a "sport for sport's sake" to a business? He is obeying the instinct which almost every one has, to do something well; he is making it an issue; it is representative of the whole problem of success; and if in its performance he gets that discipline and moral training that he fails to get in his studies, which is at fault, football or the college courses?

But to return to the evils. Many who are aware of these advantages contend that as athletics go on, they do more harm than good; that most men succumb to the temptations and allow their moral fiber to be weakened instead of built up. In short, the situation is this: We have a system which, like democracy, is evolved by strong spontaneous forces, and which, like democracy, is subject to violent abuse, and is not yet adjusted.

Now how should we set to work to cure the evil? How do we in politics? Because politics are corrupted by self-seekers, do we

abandon them? And because intercollegiate sport does more harm than good, should we abandon it? This I believe would be cowardice. It may be urged that politics are necessary, and intercollegiate sport is not. But the forces which have made it are too strong and significant to be overlooked. Do we cheer ourselves hoarse over the Yale game through some morbid impulse or because a healthy enthusiasm. is released in us and given a chance to express itself? I believe that few things which may be had at will, do us as much good as to have our college feeling thoroughly roused over a great football game. If these forces are so strong, so spontaneous and so essential a part of human nature, shall we get better results by trying to check them on account of the evils, or by so guiding and regulating them as to cure the evil and keep the good?

Let us consider class politics in elections. Here is a spontaneous outgrowth of college life opening great opportunities for "wire-pulling" and all the evil adjuncts of politics in general. With what effect? It becomes a training school. We find reproduced in miniature many of the temptations and exigencies that will be met in after life. And here is the crucial point. Temptation is opportunity, and opportunity means a parting of the ways. Here the sheep are separated from the goats, and the strong men are enabled to show what stuff is in them by using straight politics and influencing others to do so.

It seems to me as clear as day that such a training school, with its temptations, is one of the best possible preparations for the outside world. And so in football, the very temptations make the best of opportunities for strengthening character, if we only use it right.

"He either fears his fate too much

Or his deserts are small,

Who dares not put it to the touch

To win or lose it all."

In athletics, in class politics and in a dozen other unofficial forms of undergraduate activity, we find the students striving to accomplish something and taking it seriously. I feel sure that in all these things what takes hold of the student's ambition is the likeness to after life,

the responsibility, the decision, the temptation, the opportunity to develop character. As Mr. Lee says, play is "Nature's prescribed course." And as the boy grows up he looks ahead and seeks to embody in those activities, where freedom is allowed, the exigencies he will meet in after life.

I know of but one educational institution where these spontaneous forces are made the cornerstone of the whole system, and that is the George Junior Republic. And the success of this system has so surpassed all precedent as to have drawn attention from almost the wholeworld. Here a small community has been allowed to grow untrammelled by traditional methods; and every prompting of boyish instinct, good or bad, has been given a free chance to evolve. Left to work itself out, the community has constantly weeded out the bad. Here the natural instincts which in college give rise to athletics and the rest, instead of being hampered by official subordination, are regarded as the essence of progress, and encouraged to the utmost.

Of course it would be absurd to abandon or subordinate our courses and academic requirements and say that henceforth Harvard should exist to encourage elections, clubs, charities and athletics; but to try to smother these because they appeal so strongly to students, and because evils have lodged in them, is to overlook, I think, a force of the utmost importance in education. When we have learned to make the college courses fire the ambition of the full-blooded college men as football does now, then it may be time to check the athletic rage, but not until then.

English sport is held up to us as a model because it is carried on for recreation. But if the American temperament has found something better than recreation in athletics, should we turn our backs on it because the English do not find what we find, or because it is not traditional? Saul went to find his father's asses and was made prince over Israel, but he didn't decline the honor because it wasn't part of his program.

Alexander Forbes.

A VILLANELLE OF THE JOY OF LIFE

Between the lights that gleam, the shades that fleet,
The stars and shadows of our mortal way,
Surely our little hour of life is sweet.

Sunlight wherein our labors to complete,

And twilight for our brooding dreams; we stray Between the lights that gleam, the shades that fleet.

With each recurrent joyous morn we greet

A world new-made, to fashion as we may ; Surely our little hour of life is sweet.

Still we pass on, with slowly lingering feet,
Glad in the glory of the long fair day,
Between the lights that gleam, the shades that fleet.

We feel the stir of larger pulses beat

Within the shelter of our fragile clay.

Surely our little hour of life is sweet.

Into the dark we pass at length, to meet

We know not whom; but, while we yet delay

Between the lights that gleam, the shades that fleet,

Surely our little hour of life is sweet.

Charles Edward Whitmore.

FANTOCCINI.

This is the story of the whole affair as I wrote it up in my diary on Wednesday.

Sunday, February 5.

Fantoccini is in town. I never really expected to see him again, though I do remember when we were in Venice in the winter of '98 he told me he might come over in a few years. He was a very strange man in many ways, yet he had a quiet fascination that drew me to him, sometimes in spite of myself. He was a chemist and his hands were always stained with blue, or red, or yellow, but his business seemed to occupy very little of his time. He was at any rate a man of wide reading and an excellent talker, and his experience as a traveller made him a most acceptable guide and companion to me, a stranger and greenhorn as I was.

And here is that signet he gave me. I well remember the day he put it on my finger. We were strolling leisurely across the Piazza of St. Mark, where I loved to watch my fellow-tourists feed the pigeons, (though I wouldn't have done it myself for the world). It was a crystalline day, with the faintest touch of haziness to soften the rough edges of things. Just at the stroke of noon when the giants of the tower were lifting their hammers, Fantoccini turned suddenly and slipped the ring on my finger. "Keep it," he said, "it will be of service to you some day." He was so grimly serious all of a sudden that I couldn't help laughing. But he cut me short. Seizing my arm roughly, he swung me around. "Face the West," he commanded, in his deep, resolute voice, "and raise your right hand above your head." I could see by his eye that he was in deadly earnest; and I have never seen eyes so black, and lustrous, and piercing as his. When he looked at me squarely I felt uncomfortable, and even though my conscience was