lected,
however); the "Mystic Hall Female Seminary" advertises riding-horses;
and we believe the new "Concord School" recognizes boating as an
incidental;--but these are all exceptional cases, and far between.
Faint and shadowy in our memory are certain ruined structures lingering
Stonehenge-like on the Cambridge "Delta,"--and mysterious pits
adjoining, into which Freshmen were decoyed to stumble, and of which
we find that vestiges still remain. Tradition spoke of Dr. Follen
and German gymnastics; but the beneficent exotic was transplanted
prematurely, and died. The only direct encouragement of athletic
exercises which stands out in our memory of academic life was a certain
inestimable shed on the "College Wharf," which was for a brief season
the paradise of swimmers, and which, after having been deliberately
arranged for their accommodation, was suddenly removed, the next season,
to make room for coal-bins. Manly sports were not positively discouraged
in our day,--but that was all.

Yet earlier reminiscences of the same beloved Cambridge suggest deeper
gratitude. Thanks to thee, W.W.,--first pioneer, in New England, of true
classical learning,--last wielder of the old English birch,--for the
manly British sympathy which encouraged to activity the bodies, as well
as the brains, of the numerous band of boys who played beneath the
stately elms of that pleasant play-ground! Who among modern pedagogues
can show such an example of vigorous pedestrianism in his youth as thou
in thine age? and who now grants half-holidays, unasked, for no other
reason than that the skating is good and the boys must use it while it
lasts?

We cling still to the belief, that the Persian _curriculum_ of
studies--to ride, to shoot, and to speak the truth--is the better part
of a boy's education. As the urchin is undoubtedly physically safer for
having learned to turn a somerset and fire a gun, perilous though these
feats appear to mothers,--so his soul is made healthier, larger, freer,
stronger, by hours and days of manly exercise and copious draughts of
open air, at whatever risk of idle habits and bad companions. Even
if the balance is sometimes lost, and play prevails, what matter? We
rejoice to have been a schoolmate of him who wrote

"The hours the idle schoolboy squandered
The man would die ere he'd forget."

Only keep in a boy a pure and generous heart, and, whether he work or
play, his time can scarcely be wasted. Which really has