In America, sportsmanship is almost a religion. Fellows mortify the flesh for months and leave no means untried that may help to bring honor to their college; or if they don't, public opinion brings swift and sure retribution. It is true that this leads to excesses. Rivalries are so strong that undergraduates have been known to be more than politic in arranging matches with each other. So the graduate steps in to moderate the ardor of emulation, and often ends by keeping alive ancient animosities long after they would have been forgotten in the vanishing generations of undergraduates. The Harvard eleven wants to play the usual football game; but it is not allowed to, because a committee of graduates sees fit to snub Yale; the athletic team wants to accept a challenge from Oxford and Cambridge, but it is not allowed to because Pennsylvania, which is not challenged, has a better team, and it is the policy of the university (which has an eye to its graduate schools) to ingratiate sister institutions. In a word, the undergraduates are left to manage their studies while the faculty manages their pastimes. When a contest is finally on, excesses are rampant. Of occasional brutalities too much has perhaps been said; but more serious errors are unreproved. There is a tradition that it is the duty of all non-athletes to inspire the 'varsity teams by cheering the play from the side lines; and from time to time one reads leading articles in the college papers exhorting men to back the teams. The spectator is thus given an important part in every contest, and after a 'varsity match he is praised or blamed, together with the members of the team, according to his deserts. Yale may outplay Harvard, but if Harvard sufficiently out-cheers Yale she wins, and to the rooters belong the praise. In baseball games especially, a season's championship is not infrequently decided by the fact that the partisans of one side are more numerous, or for other reasons make more noise. These are serious excesses, and are worthy of the pen of the robustest reformer; but after all has been said they are incidents, and in the slow course of time are probably disappearing.