Rowing and Track Athletics (extract)

Track Athletics in the Colleges 267 alike unknown. President Eliot, in speaking of the average college freshman of those days, describes him as a person of " undeveloped muscle, a bad carriage, and an impaired diges– tion, without skill in out-of-door games, and un– able to ride, row, swim, or shoot." Some of the descriptions of the Hemenway gymnasium - an antique and inadequate enough building in the opinion of the contemporary undergraduate - written when that building was new, give one some idea of the na:ivete of those days. " Look upward!" says one of these enthusiasts, referring to the main floor of the room in which the Har– vard undergraduates are wont to huddle, juggling dumb-bells and toying with chest weights; "what a vast network of iron frames and crossing bars and rods, all seeming at first to be hopeless!y entangled with each other until they form almost a ceiling by themselves l Here hang stout cotton ropes and there hemp ones, ... sloping ladders, some down here by you, some away up there in the roof! . . . Huge mats a foot thick lie spread on the polished floor beneath, ready for you to fall; ... that broad board sloping sharply upward is a springboard made purposely for high or long– distance jumping when first you take a sharp run, then spring from the board with all your might and main; ... over there is a glorious stationary springboard ten feet long; ... pull these weights