ATHLETICS DISCOURAGED AT PRINCETON.

A day or two ago at the opening exercises of the term, President McCosh, of Princeton College, took occasion to deliver a long harangue against athletic sports as at present practiced in colleges. The good doctor asserted that an undue amount of attention was paid to athletic sports as compared with the proper studies of the course, and that a reform in this particular was earnestly to be desired. He, therefore, urgently requested that less attention be paid to outdoor sports and more to books. Dr. McCosh, like his learned brother the Rev. Howard Crosby does not believe in developing the muscles as well as the brain. Dr. McCosh is an intelligent man, but on the subject of physical culture he is as far from the golden mean as the man who advocates the other extreme. Excessive athletic exercise is as injurious as none at all, and the error of the president of Princeton College is shared by many people. We are told by the learned professors that occasionally a student suffers some slight injury in the gymnasium which for a day or two necessitates absence from the class room, but nothing is ever said of the broken down book-worm whose back is bent, shoulders rounded and eyes ruined. At Harvard College the gymnasium is one of the best equipped in the country, and the students take just as much exercise as the director, who is both a trained gymnast and a skilful physician, counsels. No one ever heard of an accident there. How many young and old men find athletic exercise the only safeguard against dyspepsia or insomnia? It is time this tirade against college athletics ceased. American students, despite all that has been said to the contrary, need rather encouragement than discouragement in respect to rational athletic training. - [Turf, Field and Farm.