"No, I didn't say so," said the Idiot. "In one respect I think it would be a very bad thing. Such a method would involve the utter destruction of the football and rowing seasons, unless the universities took some decided measures looking toward the preservation of these branches of undergraduate endeavor. It is coming to be recognized as a fact that a man can be branded with the mark of intellectual distinction in absentia, as the Aryan tribes used to put it, but a man can't win athletic prowess without giving the matter attention in propria persona, to adopt the phraseology of the days of Uncle Remus. You can't stroke a crew by mail any more than you can stroke a cat by freight, and it doesn't make any difference how wonderful he may be physically, a Yale man selling dry-goods out in Nebraska can't play football with a Harvard student employed in a grocery store at New Orleans by telephone. You can do it with chess, but not with basket ball. There are some things in university life that require the individual attention of the student. Unless something is done by our colleges, then, to care for this very important branch of their service to growing youth, the new scheme will meet with much opposition from the public." "What would you, in your infinite wisdom, suggest?" asked the Doctor. "The wise man, when he points out an objection to another's plans, suggests a remedy." "That's easy," said the Idiot. "I should have what I should call residential terms for those who wished to avail themselves of athletic training under academic auspices. The leading colleges could announce that they were open for business from October 1st to December 1st for the study of the Theory and Practice of Gridirony--" "Excuse me," said Mr. Pedagog. "But what was that word?" "Gridirony," observed the Idiot. "That would be my idea of the proper academic designation of a course in football, a game which is played on the gridiron. It is more euphonious than goalology or leather spheroids, which have suggested themselves to me." "Go on!" sighed the Doctor. "As a word-mint you are unrivalled." "There could be a term in baseballistics; another in lacrossetics; a fourth in aquatics, and so on all through the list of intercollegiate sports, each in the season best suited to its completest development." "It's not a bad idea, that," said Mr. Pedagog. "A parent sending his boy to college under such conditions would have a fairly good idea of what the lad was doing. As matters are now, it's a question whether the undergraduate acquires as much of Euripides as he does of Travis, and as far as I can find out there are more Yale men around who know all about Bob Cook and Hinkey than there are who are versed in Chaucer, Milton, and Shakespeare."