I hear a great deal said nowadays about the lack of attention which the older generation gave to manly sports. We did not make much fuss about them, I agree, and consequently some boys may have been allowed to grow to manhood without proper physical training; but it seems to me that most of us were playing something in the fresh air the greater portion of the time. However, I have always been a great believer in manly sports and I wish to continue to be. When my boy entered college I remember telling him kindly but explicitly that it was a costly matter to send him there, and that I should expect him to make the most of the opportunities for improvement which were offered him. I knew that he was not especially clever at his books like his brother David, yet at the same time I had set him down as a sensible, wide-awake fellow with at least an average amount of brains and with plenty of tact and common sense. It was my hope that he would devote himself to political economy and mathematics, in which case I should try and find an opening for him after graduation with the firm of Leggatt & Paine, our leading bankers. I expected, of course, that he would continue to take a suitable amount of exercise, to keep himself in good trim; row on the river and not altogether renounce base-ball. Indeed, although I was aware that collegiate sports were a much more serious tax on a student's time than in my day, I should not have seriously demurred had he been selected to row on the University crew or play on the University base-ball nine. I should have greatly preferred to have him steer clear of both; still, I try to remember that I was once his age myself, and I am given to understand that the rivalry between the several colleges in these matters is more intense than ever. There was a time when nothing seemed to me of such vital interest as whether Harvard or Yale won the boat race. The Darwinian theory paled in comparative importance beside it. Indeed, I still take more interest in it than it deserves, perhaps. Nevertheless, I took pains to impress upon Fred that his studies were to be his first consideration.