Various

“ But at the very close of the game, when, after all the players have become exhausted, the real nerve of the contest arrives. That is the time when the man who has been slowly and carefully training year by year will find that he is better than all the others, and that he can put in the extra pound at the oar or the extra speed at the long football run which carries his team to a closely won victory. ”

“ The most interesting part of the buildings are the school-rooms, which stand to-day almost precisely as they were built. It gives you a queer feeling to think how many boys and how many generations of boys have sat on those benches at Arma virumque cano, or trying to drum the hὁ, hἡ, τó into heads that are already overflowing with dreams of fresh breezes on the river, and of the sound of the cricket-ball on the playing-fields. ”

“ Their niece was bringing into their presence a dead kitten! She was accompanied by two of her friends the Hoyt boys, but they, dismayed by the sight of a circle of five ladies, retreated into the hall, and peered through the crack of the half-open door. Still another was at the foot of the stairs, not daring to come up higher.
"Theodora, what is it?" cried Miss Middleton, while Miss Melissa shuddered and felt for her smelling-salts. She was afraid of cats, even of dead ones.
"It's a dear little kitten, Aunt Adaline, and it is dead. It will never breathe again. ”

“ Sometimes it happens that a fag turns out a great cricketer or oarsman, in which case his old fag-master is as proud of him as of a younger brother. Like as not in after-life a country parson can look back upon the time when he fagged the bishop of his diocese. Like tunding or smacking, fagging is at bottom more humane than the neglect which a small boy suffers at an American school.
The boys are kept very much together in each house by their meals and the early hour of "lock-up" ”

“ Such societies as Pop form almost the entire social life at most American schools and universities; but in England the members never lose loyalty for the college or house they belong to. This is the reason why at Eton Pop has such a strong and good influence over the rest of the school. In America, when a man gets into a leading society he is naturally and almost inevitably drawn away from his earlier and less fortunate friends, so that the school or university is split up into two parts—those who are in things and those who are not. ”

“ So they spent more money, laid more cables, failed again, toiled and moiled and worked like beavers for years, until at last in 1866 they finished a cable from Ireland to Nova Scotia that worked like a charm. It was, without exception, the greatest piece of work ever done in electricity, and its history is one of the finest of the many tales of engineering enterprise.
To-day there are about a dozen cables between North America and Europe, and three between South America and Europe. There are cables in every sea and ocean in the world, and across every ocean except the Pacific. ”

“ Athletic training, therefore, is nothing sudden, nothing to be "taken up" at any one time for a short space, but a general self-control and guard which the boy or man keeps over himself in summer and in winter, keeping himself healthy, in good hard condition, and ready for anything he may be called on to do. Any one will tell you this is quite in line with the best methods of study, of work, or of business in after-life; that it is the steady, careful man that wins. ”

“ Most of the masters make it a point to find out all they can about a boy from his parents, and then carry on his training as it was begun; or if he thinks his training unwise, to correct it. The fact that most of the troublesome details of discipline are in the hands of the elder boys makes a master's relations with his pupils unusually frank and affectionate. And as the masters are always well educated, usually sensible, and often famous athletes, they have a strong and very admirable influence. ”

“ To-day the school numbers over a thousand—twice as many as Winchester—and its graduates include far more men of birth or genius than those of any other public school. Just as Winchester raised the standard of scholarship at Oxford, so Eton has made Oxford the university of the English aristocracy. ”

“ Nobody ever made a great success at anything by working night and day for a month or two. And it is precisely the same with baseball or rowing or football as it is with studies or law or the ministry.
You may have been eating all sorts of things during the summer, sitting up late at night, and getting up late in the morning. Do you fancy that on the 1st of October you can begin an entirely new life, and make a good football-player of yourself by Thanksgiving day? Not by any means. If you want to be the member of some college athletic team, begin before you get to college. ”

“ The batsman uses a bat much like a cricket bat. Taking his position, the umpire says, "One, two, three," and on the instant the "three" is spoken the pitcher delivers the ball. The batter has to guess at the time the ball will reach him, and he guesses rightly in more cases than one would think possible. If the ball is missed it lands in the catcher's lap. Beginners at the bat strike ludicrously wide of the ball, but as all the players are blind, they miss the place to laugh. If the ball is batted, the umpire calls out the name of the player toward whom the ball is going. ”

“ You must not think, however, that a man will get on Pop merely for being a great athlete. He must be a first-rate fellow besides, and as it happens, there are always a number of clever men and good scholars among the athletes in the society. In a word, Pop is the best society that can be made up from the athletic men, and is even more purely athletic than the Dickey at Harvard or Vincent's at Oxford. ”

“ The offences punished by smacking are disorder and disobedience in the house. On an average, the head master has only half a dozen boys or so to swish each term, and the average boy is not smacked more than a dozen times during his six years at Eton. Many people, of course, think bodily punishment very brutal, but I never knew a public-school boy or a master who did not approve of it as practised nowadays. In fact, you could hardly enlist the older boys on the side of law and order without giving them a means of discipline which the younger boys respect ”

“ Ten years ago the electric motor was in its swaddling-clothes, and was never placed out of sight of its nurse, the dynamo. Nowadays electrical engineers think nothing of building motors of several hundreds of horse-power, and of placing them many miles from the dynamos that supply them with current. In this way a factory may be run by the power of a waterfall ever so many miles distant. The waterfall drives the dynamo, the dynamo sends its current along wires carried on poles up hill and down dale until they reach the motor, and the motor drives the machinery of the mill. ”

“ The telephone, more than any other electrical invention, made people think that anything is possible with electricity. It was such a marvellous performance to send the voice along a wire from one end of a city to another, that when people became a little familiar with it they were prepared for anything. A famous electrician once raised a laugh at a dinner by relating in his speech that when a friend had asked him over the telephone if he recognized his voice, he replied, "Yes, and I can smell your cigar." ”

“ In 1894, there were 250,000 telephone subscribers in the United States. New York and Chicago each has 10,000. The number of conversations carried on each day by means of the telephone—well, you might almost as well try to count the grains of sand on the sea-shore. Not only has this infant learned to talk a great deal—and, surprising to say, it speaks all languages with equal ease, even the hopelessly difficult ones—but it has got amazing lung power. ”

“ One argues that it is necessary to charge admission-fees to football games because the public interest in high-school athletics is so great in Connecticut that a stiff admission-fee is the only barrier against a disorderly crowd. ”

“ In the same way you cannot train your muscles, to do extraordinary things in a few short weeks. It requires months and years of gradual work. If you start in late and work hard every day you will ruin your muscles instead of improving them, and as a matter of actual record many a good man has been lost to his team for this reason alone.
What is the most critical time in a baseball match or a football game? ”

“ My opinion is, and always has been, that no one twenty-one years of age has any business being at school, unless he is extraordinarily stupid, or unless illness or a weak constitution has made it impossible for him to keep up with his studies. In either case such boys had better keep out of athletics, except for necessary light exercise, and devote all of their time to learning enough to get out of school with credit. All this is aside, and I find that I am again wandering far from the Madison High-School. ”

“ Begin by eating carefully, not by eating food fit for wild animals, but by eating good meats, and so on, and not filling up on candies and sweets day after day at meals and between meals. There is a reason for this. A man whose stomach is weak has no courage, and if he has no courage he carries himself through a game on his nerves, and is completely exhausted at the end of that game. No one can give himself a strong, vigorous digestion in one month, nor in one year if he is at all weak there. It requires years of normal living to do this, and it is the most important part of all training. ”

“ A master's best means of bringing out a boy's character is to put him in the way of having the right sort of comrades. Sometimes the older boys—perhaps at the master's suggestion—invite new boys to breakfast, as second-year men at the university invite freshmen ”

“ The government of the school is very like that at Winchester. The Captain of the College has much the same duties as the Prefect of Hall, and is aided by the other best scholars. The oppidans have also a Captain, but he is under the Captain of the College. Besides this, the houses have each a Captain, as the Winchester houses, have Prefects. Of course it does not always happen that the man who leads his house in scholarship is man enough to rule the rest; but if he is not, the leading athletes step in and take matters into their own hands. ”

“ His severest duties as a fag are to cook breakfast and supper in his fag-master's room; but in many of the houses the boys eat their meals together, so the fags have a pretty easy time of it. In fact, altogether too much has been said about the tyranny and brutality of fagging. Most small boys are glad enough to be with the big boys, and a Senior who plays football or rows well might have as many youngsters to wait on him as he chose. Fag-masters are often the fags' best friends, and even at the universities afterward keep a kindly eye upon them. ”

“ Since those days we have all discovered that training consists in eating normal food that is well cooked and taken at regular times of the day, going to bed at night by nine or ten o'clock, and rising to half past seven or eight o'clock breakfast. That part of the matter has been pretty well settled, but perhaps the most important defect in the old training system has not been corrected, though every one will acknowledge that it is a defect the moment he thinks it over. ”

“ In the winter months the boys play football up and down the halls, using the doors at either end for goal. This also makes enough noise. But these are not the only diversions. In a number of rooms you will find collections of books far larger and more wisely selected than is usual on the shelves even of American university men.
A boy enters his house at about twelve years old. From this time on he is carefully watched by the house-master, with a view to checking his bad traits and developing his good ones. ”

“ Now there is nothing an English boy likes better than a hoax, but not about such serious subjects. When that youngster got back to Eton, Pop smacked him soundly—or, in the Eton phrase, he was "Pop-caned." On another occasion, when a number of boys had been expelled for a very serious offence which had been proved against them, one of them made an imposing exit in a drag at an hour when the street in front [Pg 271] of the college was swarming with the boys. Being a popular fellow, he was loudly cheered. ”

“ Ask a boy the day before Christmas or Thanksgiving what he intends to do next day; he will say, "Eat turkey, of course." We are always glad to get a letter, and to be certain of having one in the mail we get our relatives to mark the envelope, so we can tell it before the mail is distributed.
One of the Board of Trustees, who lives in Canton, O., recently visited William McKinley, and told him he was coming to the home next day. Then the President-elect of the United States, with tears coming to his eyes, said, "Give my love to every child there. God bless them!" ”

“ Present members say that only good athletes are elected. The clever fellows have a society of their own, which is much what Pop was at first.
The members of Pop are mainly the cricketers who play against Winchester and Harrow, and the boating-men who row for and often win the Ladies' Plate at Henley. These together make, say, twenty, and eight more or so are chosen from the fellows who "get their colors" for playing the Eton games of football, which are so different from all other Rugby football that they can play them only among themselves. ”