Rowing and Track Athletics (extract)

Track Athletics conditions cannot informally be borrowed or ex– changed. No more can we hope, nor should we desire, to borrow offhand those superficial aspects of English varsity sport which make it most charming. You may fill the Hudson from shore to shore with eight-oared crews, but you cannot thereby construct an American Henley. On the day of the Oxford-Cambridge game the young gentlemen who are presently going to eat their hearts out on the track may assemble at their dressing-room in frock coats and top hats in the most casual manner in the world; should a Cor– nell or Princeton team present themselves at Mott Haven in such a costume, they would be laughed at from Portland to San Francisco. The polite charm, reposefulness, and insoudance which ap– peal so strongly to those accustomed to the overwrought atmosphere of American collegiate athletics are not peculiar to English sport, but are the natural results of a society as old and aristocratic as that of England. Similar differ– ences would be just as certainly met with in comparing English and American universities, or dinners or architecture or country houses or afternoon teas. The big and important things for young Ameri– cans to think about in going into track athletics are fairness and frankness and courtesy and generosity. Strength and seriousness and sand