e oar fixed under his chin,
being forced backwards with an air of smiling and virtuous confusion. I
hasten to say that this is not a true picture. I arrived at a
reasonable degree of proficiency in several games: I was a competent,
though not a zealous, oar; I captained a college football team, and I
do not hesitate to say that I have derived more pleasure from football
than from any other form of exercise. I have climbed some mountains,
and am even a member of the Alpine Club; I may add that I am a keen,
though not a skilful, sportsman, and am indeed rather a martyr to
exercise and open air. I make these confessions simply to show that I
do not approach the subject from the point of view of a sedentary
person but indeed rather the reverse. No weather appears to me to be
too bad to go out in, and I do not suppose there are a dozen days in
the year in which I do not contrive to get exercise.

But exercise in the open air is one thing, and games are quite another.
It seems to me that when a man has reached an age of discretion, he
ought no longer to need the stimulus of competition, the desire to hit
or kick balls about, the wish to do such things better than other
people. It seems to me that the elaborate organization of athletics is
a really rather serious thing, because it makes people unable to get on
without some species of excitement. I was staying the other day at a
quiet house in the country, where there was nothing particular to do;
there was not, strange to say, even a golf course within reach. There
came to stay there for a few days an eminent golfer, who fell into a
condition of really pitiable dejection. The idea of taking a walk or
riding a bicycle was insupportable to him; and I think he never left
the house except for a rueful stroll in the garden. When I was a
schoolmaster it used to distress me to find how invariably the parents
of boys discoursed with earnestness and solemnity about a boy's games;
one was told that a boy was a good field, and really had the makings of
an excellent bat; eager inquiries were made as to whether it was
possible for the boy to get some professional coaching; in the case of
more philosophically inclined parents it generally led on to a
statement of the social advantages of being a good cricketer, and often
to the expression of a belief that virtue was in some way indissolubly
connected with keenness in games. For one parent who said anything
about a boy's intellectual interes