AN ENGLISH RUGBY LINE-UPAN ENGLISH RUGBY LINE-UPTo the left of the scrum, two half backs and six three-quarter backs face each other in pairs
AN ENGLISH RUGBY LINE-UPTo the left of the scrum, two half backs and six three-quarter backs face each other in pairs
When the opposing teams scattered over the field for the kick-off, I noticed with satisfaction that there was not a spectator on the grounds to embarrass me. It is so in almost all English college games—the fellows are more than likely to have sports of their own on, and anyway, what is the use in hanging round the fields where other fellows are having all the fun?
On the kick-off, luckily, the ball did not come to my corner of the field, for I could scarcely have seen it, much less caught it. Our side returned the kick and the "scrum" formed. The nine forwards gathered compactly in a semi-ellipse, bent their bodies together in a horizontal plane, with their heads carefully tucked beneath the mass, and leaned against the opposing mass of forwards, who were similarly placed. When the two scrums were thoroughly compacted, the umpire tossed the ball on the ground beneath the opposing sets of legs, whereupon both sides began to struggle. The scrum in action looks like a huge tortoise with a score of legs at each end, which by some unaccountable freak of nature are struggling to walk in opposite directions. The sight is certainly awe-inspiring, and it was several days before I realizedthat it masked no abstrusely working tactics; there is little, if anything, in it beyond the obvious grunting and shoving.
The backs faced each other in pairs ranged out on the side of the scrum that afforded the broader field for running. The legs in the Balliol scrum pushed harder and the bodies squirmed to more advantage, for our men had presently got the ball among their feet. They failed to hold it there, however, and it popped out into a half-back's hands. He passed it quickly to one of my companions at three-quarters, who dodged his man and ran toward the corner of the field. I followed, and just as the full-back collared him he passed the ball to me. Before I had taken three rheumatic strides I had two men hanging at my back; but when they brought me down, the ball was just beyond the line. The audience arose as one man—to wit, the referee, who had been squatting on the side lines—and shouted, "Played. Well played!" I had achieved universal fame. During the rest of the game the Balliol scrum, which was a very respectable affair of its kind, kept the ball to itself, while we backs cooled our heels.
A few days later, in a game against Jesus, the scrums were more evenly matched, and the ball was heeled out oftener. I soon found that myeyes were not sharp enough to follow quick passing; and when, just before half-time, a punt came in my direction, I was horrified to see the ball multiply until it looked like a flock of balloons. As luck had it, I singled out the wrong balloon to catch. Jesus fell on the ball just as it bounced over the goal-line. In the second half the captain put one of the forwards in my place, and put me in the scrum.
The play here was more lively, though scarcely more complex or difficult. Each forward stuck his head beneath the shoulders of the two men in front of him, grasped their waists, and then heaved, until, when the ball popped out of the scrum, the word came to dissolve. There were absolutely no regular positions; the man who was in the front centre of one scrummage might be in the outskirts of the next. On some teams, I found, by inquiry, a definite order is agreed on, but this is regarded as of doubtful advantage.
When the umpire or a half-back tosses the ball into the scrummage, there are, at an ultimate analysis, four things that can happen. First, the two sides may struggle back and forth, carrying the ball on the ground at their feet; this play is called a "pack." Second, the stronger side may cleave the weaker, and run down the field, dribbling the ballyard by yard as they go, until either side picks it up for a run, or else drops on it and cries "down." Third, one side may be able to "screw the scrum," a manœuvre which almost rises to the altitude of a "play." The captain shouts "Right!" or perhaps "Left!" and then his forwards push diagonally, instead of directly, against their opponents. The result is very like what we used to call a revolving wedge, except that, since the ball is carried on the ground, the play eventuates, when successful, in a scattering rush of forwards down the field, dribbling the ball at their feet, just as when the scrum has been cloven. The fourth possibility is that the side that gets the ball amongst its eighteen legs allows it to ooze out behind, or, if its backs are worthy of confidence, purposely heels it out. Thereupon results the play I have already described: one of the half-backs pounces upon it and passes it deftly to the three-quarters, who run with it down the field, if necessary passing it back and forth. In plays which involve passing or dribbling, English teams sometimes reach a very high degree of skill: few sights on the football field are more inspiring than to see a "combination" of players rush in open formation among their opponents, shifting the ball from one to another with such rapidity and accuracy as to elude allattempts to arrest it. As a whole, the game of the forwards is much more fun than that of the backs, though decidedly less attractive in the eyes of the spectators—a consideration of slight importance on an English field!
THROWING IN THE BALLTHROWING IN THE BALL
THROWING IN THE BALL
Just as I began to get warmed to my new work I smashed my nose against the head of a Balliol man who was dodging back into the push. The captain told me that I need not finish the game; but as it is against the English rules to substitute players and we were still far from sure of winning, I kept to my grunting and shoving. At the end of the game the captain very politely gave me the hoof. This was just what I expected and deserved; but I was surprised to find that the fellows had objected to my playing the game through with a bloody nose. They would have preferred not to be bled upon.
This regard for pleasantness and convenience, which to an American is odd enough, is characteristic even of 'varsity football. The slenderness of the preliminary training of a 'varsity fifteen is incredible to any American who has not witnessed it. To sift the candidates there is a freshman match and a senior match, with perhaps one or two "squashes"—that is to say, informal games—besides. And even these tests are largely amatter of form. Men are selected chiefly on their public school reputations or in consequence of good work on a college fifteen. The process of developing players, so familiar to us, is unknown. There is no coaching of any kind, as we understand the word. When a man has learned the game at his public school or in his college, he has learned it for all time, though he will, of course, improve by playing for the university. The need of concentrated practice is greatly lessened by the fact that the soft English winter allows as long a season of play as is desired. The team plays a game or two a week against the great club teams of England—Blackheath, Richmond, London Scottish, Cardiff, Newport, and Huddersfield—with perhaps a bit of informal kicking and punting between times. When the weather is too bad, it lays off entirely.
All this does not conduce to the strenuousness of spirit Americans throw into their sports. In an inter-varsity match I saw the Oxford team which was fifty per cent. better allow itself to be shoved all over the field: it kept the game a tie only by the rarest good fortune. It transpired later that the gayeties of Brighton, whither the team had gone to put the finishing touches on its training, had been too much for it. In an American universitysuch laxity would be thought the lowest depth of unmanliness, but I could not see that any one at Oxford really resented it; at most it was a subject for mild sarcasm. You can't expect a team to be in the push everywhere!
This lack of thorough preparation is even more characteristic of the international teams—England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales—that yearly play for the championship of Great Britain. They are chosen from the most brilliant players in the leading clubs, and local jealousy makes the task of choosing most delicate. The temptation is to take a man or two impartially from each of the great fifteens. As the international teams take little or no practice as a whole, the tendency in the great games is to neglect the finer arts of dribbling and passing in combination—the arts for which each player was severally chosen—and revert to the primitive grunting and shoving. In the great games, accordingly, the team which is man for man inferior as regards the fine points may prevail by sheer strength, so that the result is liable to be most unsatisfactory. Some years ago, owing to local jealousy, the Welsh international had to be chosen mainly from a single club—with the result that it won the championship; and in 1901 the canny Scotch team won by intentionally selectingits members, in spite of local jealousy, on the score of their familiarity with one another's play.
The very rules under which the game is played are calculated to moderate the struggle. As a result of the rule against substituting, to which I have referred, any extreme of hard play in the practice games, such as lays off dozens of good American players yearly, is not likely to be encouraged. Of course good men "crock," as they call it; but where an injury is practically certain to disqualify a man from the inter-varsity match, the football limp and the football patch can scarcely be regarded as the final grace of athletic manhood. Willful brutality is all but unknown; the seriousness of being disqualified abets the normal English inclination to play the game like a person of sense and good feeling. The physical effect of the sport is to make men erect, lithe, and sound. And the effect on the nervous system is similar. The worried, drawn features of the American player on the eve of a great contest are unknown. An Englishman could not understand how it has happened that American players have been given sulphonal during the last nights of training. English Rugby is first of all a sport, an exercise that brings manly powers into play; as Hamlet would say, the play's the thing. It iseminently an enjoyable pastime, pleasant to watch, and more pleasant to take part in.
That our American game is past hoping for on the score of playability is by no means certain. As the historical critics of literature are fond of saying, a period of rapid development is always marked by flagrant excesses, and the development of modern American football has been of astonishing rapidity. Quite often the game of one season has been radically different from the games of all preceding seasons. This cannot continue always, for the number of possible variations is obviously limited, and when the limit is reached American Rugby will be, like English Rugby, the same old game year in and year out. Everybody, from the youngest prep. to the oldest grad., will know it and love it.
The two vital points in which our game differs from the English—"possession of the ball" and "interference"—are both the occasion of vigorous handling of one's opponents. When an American player is tackled, he seldom dares to pass the ball for fear of losing possession of it, so that our rule is to tackle low and hard, in order to stop the ball sharply, and if possible to jar it out of the runner's grasp. In England, it is still fair play to grab a man by the ankle. This is partly because of thesoftness of the moist thick English turf; but more largely because, as passing is the rule, the tackler in nine cases out of ten aims at the ball. The result is that a man is seldom slammed to the earth as he would be in our game. It is this fact that enables the English player to go bare-kneed.
The danger from interference in the American game is also considerable. When a man is blocked off, he is liable to be thrown violently upon the far from tender bosom of our November mother-earth. Any one familiar with the practice of an American eleven will remember the constant cry of the coaches: "Knock your man on the ground! Put him out of the play!" It has been truly enough said that the American game has exaggerated the most dangerous features of the two English games—the tackling of English Rugby and the "charging" or body-checking of the Association game.
Yet this is only a partial statement of the case. These elements of possession of the ball and interference have raised our game incalculably above the English game as a martial contest. Whereas English Rugby has as yet advanced very little beyond its first principles of grunting and shoving, the American game has always been supreme as a school and a test of courage; and it has always tended, albeit with some excesses, toward an incomparablyhigh degree of skill and strategy. Since American football is still in a state of transition, it is only fair to judge the two games by the norm to which they are severally tending. The Englishman has on the whole subordinated the elements of skill in combination to the pleasantness of the sport, while the American has somewhat sacrificed the playability of the game to his insatiate struggle for success and his inexhaustible ingenuity in achieving it. More than any other sport, Rugby football indicates the divergent lines along which the two nations are developing. By preferring either game a man expresses his preference for one side of the Atlantic over the other.
IV
TRACK AND FIELD ATHLETICS
Intrack and field athletics, the pleasantness and informality of English methods of training reach a climax. In America we place the welfare of our teams in the hands of a professional trainer, who, through his aide-de-camp, the undergraduate captain, is apt to make the pursuit of victory pretty much a business. Every autumn newcomers are publicly informed that it is their duty to the university to train for the freshman scratch games. At Oxford, I was surprised to find, there was not only no call for candidates, but no trainer to whom to apply for aid. The nearest approach to it was the groundsman at the Iffley Running Grounds, a retired professional who stoked the boilers for the baths, rolled the cinder-path, and occasionally acted as "starter." As his "professional" reputation as a trainer was not at stake in the fortunes of the Oxford team, his attitude was humbly advisory. The president of the Athletic Club never came near the grounds, being busy with rowing on a 'varsity trial eight, and later with playing Association footballfor the university. To one accustomed to train not only for the glory of his alma mater but for the reputation of his trainer, the situation was uninspiring.
As I might have expected, the impetus to train came from the college. I was rescued from a fit of depression by a college-mate, a German, who wanted some one to train with. At school he had run three miles in remarkable time; but later, when an officer in the German army, his horse had rolled over him at the finish of a steeple-chase, and the accident had knocked out his heart; so he was going to try to sprint. I advised him against all training, and the groundsman shook his head. Yet he was set upon showing the Englishmen in Balliol that a German could be a sportsman. This was no idle talk, as I found later, when he fainted in the bath after a fast hundred, and failed by no one knows how little of coming to. We were soon joined by a third Balliol man, a young Greek poet, whose name is familiar to all who are abreast of the latest literary movement at Athens. He was taking up with athletics because of his interest in the revival of the ancient glories of Greece. When I asked him what distance suited him best—whether he was a sprinter or a runner—he answered with the sweet reasonableness of the Hellenicnature that any distance would suit him that suited me. A motlier trio than we, I suppose, never scratched a cinder-path. Yet the fellows in our college seemed almost as interested as they were amused; and we soon found that even so learned a place as Balliol would have been glad to bolster its self-esteem by furnishing its quota of "running blues." What was lacking in the way of stimulus from the university was more than made up for by the spontaneous interest of the fellows in college.
The rudimentary form of athletics is in meetings held by the separate colleges. These occur throughout the athletic season, namely, the autumn term and the winter term; and as hard on to a score of colleges give them, they come off pretty often. The prizes are sums of money placed with the Oxford jeweler, to be spent in his shop as the winners see fit. In America, the four classes, which are the only sources of athletic life independent of the university, are so moribund socially that it never occurs to them to get out on the track for a day's sport. It is true that we sometimes hold inter-class games, but the management of these is in the hands of the university; they are inspired solely by a very conscious attempt to develop new men, and to furnish the old ones with practice inracing. The vitality of the athletic spirits in the English colleges is witnessed by the fact that an Oxford college frequently meets a fit rival at Cambridge in a set of dual games just for the fun of it.
The only bond between the numerous college meetings and the university sports is a single event in each, called a strangers' race, which is open to all comers. The purpose of these races is precisely that of our inter-class meetings—to give all promising athletes practice in competition. As the two prizes in each strangers' race average five pounds and thirty shillings respectively, the races are pretty efficient. Though the "blues" sometimes compete—Cross made his record of 1m. 542⁄5s. for the half mile in one of them—they generally abandon them to the new men of promise. While the president and the "blues" generally are rowing and playing football, the colleges thus automatically develop new material for the team.
The climax of the athletic meetings of the autumn term is the freshman sports, held on two days, with a day's interval. The friends of the various contestants make up a far larger audience than one finds at similar sports in America; and a brass band plays while the races are on. The whole thing is decidedly inspiring; and for thefirst time one is brought face to face with the fact that there are inter-varsity games in store.
When the winter term opens, bleak and rainy, the strangers' races bring out more upper classmen. By and by the "blues" themselves appear in sweater, muffler, and blazer, and "paddle" about the track to supple their muscles and regain disused racing strides. At the end of a fortnight I noticed a middle-aged gentleman with whom the prominent athletes conferred before and after each day's work. I soon found that he was Mr. C. N. Jackson, a don of Hertford College, who should always be remembered as the first hurdler to finish in even time. It is he who—save the mark—takes the place of our American trainers. At one of our large American universities about this time, as I afterwards learned, a very different scene was enacting. The trainer and the captain called a mass-meeting and collected a band of Mott Haven champions of the past to exhort the University to struggle free from athletic disgrace. Though the inter-varsity games were nearly four months in the future—instead of six or seven weeks as at Oxford—those ancient athletes aroused such enthusiasm that 268 men undertook the three months of indoor training. To one used to such exhortations, the Oxford indifference was as chillingas the weather we were all training in. Mr. Jackson seemed never to notice me; and how could I address him when he had not even asked me to save the university from disgrace? I was forced to the unheroic expedient of presenting a card of introduction. To my surprise, I found that he had been carefully watching my work from day to day, but had not felt justified in giving advice until I asked for it.
Even during the final period of training, everything happened so pleasantly and naturally that I had none of the nervous qualms common among American athletes. At first I thought I missed the early morning walks our teams take daily, the companionship and jollity of the training-table, and the sense that the team was making a common sacrifice for an important end. Yet here, too, the college made up in a large measure for what I failed to find in the university. One of our eightsmen was training with a scrub four that was to row a crew of schoolboys at Winchester; and we had a little course of training of our own. Every morning we walked out for our dip to Parson's Pleasure, and breakfasted afterward beneath an ancient ivied window in the common room. In the pleasantness and quiet of those sunlit mornings, I began to realize that our training-table mirth, which is sometimesso boisterous, is in part at least due to intense excitement and overwrought nerves. And the notion of self-sacrifice, which appeals to us so deeply, seemed absurd where we were all training for the pleasure and wholesomeness of sport, and for the sake of a ribbon of blue.
The interest the university took in our welfare became made manifest when the "first strings" were sent off to Brighton for the change in climate which all English teams require before great games. Some of the rest of us, who had nowhere else to go, went with them, but most of the men went home to train. The second string in the three miles stayed up at Oxford for commemoration, and joined us after three consecutive nights of dancing. He said that he found he needed staying up work.
Every morning at Brighton the president made the round of our quarter of the hotel shortly before eight o'clock, and spoiled our waking naps to rout us out for our morning's walk, which included a plunge into the Channel. For breakfast, as indeed for all our meals, we had ordinary English fare, with the difference only that it was more abundant.
On alternate days our training consisted in cross-country walks of ten or a dozen miles. Our favorite paths led along the chalk cliffs, and commanded a lordly view of the Channel. Sometimes,for the sake of variety, we went by train to the Devil's Dyke and tramped back over the downs, now crossing golf-links and now skirting cornfields ablaze with poppies. All this walking filled our lungs with the Brighton air, and by keeping our minds off our races, prevented worry. Sprinters and distance men walked together, though the sprinters usually turned back a mile or two before the rest. The rate prescribed was three and a half miles an hour; but our spirits rose so high that we had trouble in keeping it below five.[2]
The training dinners furnished the really memorable hours of the day. A half-pint of "Burton bitter" was a necessity, and a pint merely rations. If one preferred, he might drink Burgundyad lib., or Scotch and soda. After trials there was champagne. When I told the fellows that in America our relaxation consists in ice-cream for Sunday dinner, they set me down as a humorist. After dinner, instead of coffee and tobacco, we used to go out to the West Pier, which was a miniature Coney Island, and amuse ourselves with the various attractions. The favorite diversion was seeing the Beautiful Living Lady Cremated. The attraction was the showman, who used to give an elaborateoration in Lancashire brogue. Every word of it was funny, but especially the closing sentence: "The Greeks 'ad a ancient custom of porun' a liebation on the cinders of the departud, which custom, gentlemen, we omits." We used to laugh so heartily at this that the showman would join in, and even the beautiful living lady would snicker companionably, as she crawled away beneath the stage. If the reader is unable to see the fun of it, there is no help for him—except, perhaps, an English training dinner.
The rest of the evenings we used to spend in strolling about among the crowd, breathing the salt air, and listening to the music. We did not lack companionship, for the Oxford and Cambridge cricket elevens were at Brighton, and the entire Cambridge athletic team. Many of the cricketers, and not a few of the Cambridge athletes—whom the Oxford men called "Cantabs," and sometimes even "Tabs"—paraded the place puffing bulldog pipes. The outward relationship between the rival teams was simply that of man to man. If one knew a Cambridge man he joined him, and introduced the fellows he happened to be walking with. One day the Cambridge president talked frankly about training, urging us to take long walks, and inviting us to go with his men. The only reasonwe did not go was that our day for walking happened to be different from theirs.
The days on which we did our track work we spent largely in London, at the Queen's Club grounds, in order to get a general sense of the track and of the conditions under which the sports were to take place. Sometimes, however, we ran at Preston Park, on the outskirts of Brighton.
On the day of the inter-varsity meeting, our team came together as a whole for the first time in the dressing-rooms of the Queen's Club. The fellows dropped in one by one, in frock coats, top hats, and with a general holiday air. The Oxford broad-jumper, who was the best man at the event in England, had been so busy playing cricket all season, and smoking his pipe with the other cricketers on the pier at Brighton, that he had not had time even to send to Oxford for his jumping-shoes. In borrowing a pair he explained that unless a fellow undertook the fag of thorough training, he could jump better without any practice. Our weight-thrower, a freshman, had surprised himself two days previously by making better puts than either of the Cambridge men had ever done; but as nobody had ever thought it worth while to coach him, he did not know how he had done it, and was naturally afraid he couldn't do it again. Heshowed that he was a freshman by appearing to care whether or not he did his best; but even his imagination failed to grasp the fact that the team which won was to have the privilege of meeting Yale in America. As it turned out, if either of these men had taken his event, Oxford, instead of Cambridge, would have met Yale.
As I went out to start in my race, the question of half-sleeves which Englishmen require in all athletic contests was settled in my mind. The numberless seasonable gowns in the stands and the innumerable top hats ranged on all sides about the course made me feel as if I were at a lawn party rather than at an athletic meeting. I suffered as a girl suffers at her first evening party, or rather as one suffers in those terrible dreams where one faces the problem of maintaining his dignity in company while clad in a smile or so. Waiving the question of half-sleeves, I should have consented to run in pyjamas.
In the race I had an experience which raised a question or two that still offer food for reflection. As my best distance—a half mile—was not included in the inter-varsity program, I ran in the mile as second string. There was a strong wind and the pace was pretty hot, even for the best of us, namely, the Cambridge first string, who had wonthe race the year before in 4 min. 194⁄5sec.,—the fastest mile ever run in university games. As the English score in athletic games, only first places count, and on the second of the three laps I found myself debating whether it is not unnecessarily strenuous to force a desperate finish where the only question is how far a man can keep in front of the tail end. Several of the fellows had already dropped out in the quietest and most matter of fact manner; and as we were finishing the lap against the wind, I became a convert to the English code of sportsmanship.
As the bunch drew away from me and turned into the easy going of the sheltered stretch, I was filled with envy of them, and with uncontrollable disgust at myself, the like of which I had never felt when beaten, however badly, after making a fair struggle. And when I saw them finishing against the hurricane, striding as if they were running upstairs, I felt the heroism of a desperate finish as I had never done before. It did not help matters when I realized that it was the last race I was ever to run.
At the Sports' dinner that night at the Holborn Restaurant, I pocketed some of my disgust. The occasion was so happy that I remember wishing we might have something like it after our meetingsat home, for good-fellowship chastens the pride of winning and gives dignity to honest defeat. There was homage for the victors and humorous sympathy for the vanquished. Light blue and dark blue applauded and poked fun at each other impartially. Sir Richard Webster, Q. C., now Lord Chief Justice, himself an old blue, presided at the dinner, and explained how it was that the performances of his day were really not to be sneezed at; and the young blues, receiving their prizes, looked happy and said nothing. After dinner, we divided into squads and went to the Empire Theatre of Varieties, Cantab locking arms with Oxonian. By supper time, at St. James', I was almost cheerful again.
Yet the disgust of having quitted that race has never left me. The spirit of English sportsmanship will always seem to me very gracious and charming. As a nation, I think we can never be too thankful for the lesson our kinspeople have to teach us in sportsmanly moderation and in chivalry toward an opponent. But every man must draw his own line between the amenities of life and the austerities; and I know one American who hopes never again to quit a contest, even a contest in sport, until he has had the humble satisfaction of doing his best.
V
ENGLISH AND AMERICAN SPORTSMANSHIP
Theprevalence of out-of-door sports in England, and the amenity of the English sporting spirit, may be laid, I think, primarily, to the influence of climate. Through the long, temperate summer, all nature conspires to entice a man out of doors, while in America sunstroke is imminent. All day long the village greens in England are thronged with boys playing cricket in many-colored blazers, while every stream is dotted with boats of all sorts and descriptions; and in the evenings, long after the quick American twilight has shut down on the heated earth, the English horizon gives light for the recreations of those who have labored all day. In the winter the result is the same, though the cause is very different. Stupefying exhalations rise from the damp earth, and the livelong twilight that does for day forces a man back for good cheer upon mere animal spirits. In the English summer no normal man could resist the beckoning of the fields and the river. In the winter it is sweat, man, or die.
It is perhaps because of the incessant call to be out of doors that Englishmen care so little to have their houses properly tempered. At my first dinner with the dons of my college, the company assembled about a huge sea-coal fire. On a rough calculation the coal it consumed, if used in one of our steam-heaters, would have heated the entire college to incandescence. As it was, its only effect seemed to be to draw an icy blast across our ankles from mediæval doors and windows that swept the fire bodily up the chimney, and left us shivering. One of the dons explained that an open fire has two supreme advantages: it is the most cheerful thing in life, and it insures thorough ventilation. I agreed with him heartily, warming one ankle in my palms, but demurred that in an American winter heat was as necessary as cheerfulness and ventilation. "But if one wears thick woolens," he replied, "the cold and draught are quite endurable. When you get too cold reading, put on your great-coat." I asked him what he did when he went out of doors. "I take off my great-coat. It is much warmer there, especially if one walks briskly." Some days later, when I went to dine with my tutor, my hostess apologized for the chill of the drawing-room. "It will presently be much warmer," she added; "I have always noticed that whenyou have sat in a room awhile, it gets warm from the heat of your bodies." She proved to be right. But when we went into the dining-room, we found it like a barn. She smiled with repeated reassurances. Again she proved right; but we had hardly tempered the frost when we had to shift again to the drawing-room, which by this time again required, so to speak, to be acclimated. Meanwhile my tutor, who was of a jocular turn of mind, diverted our thoughts from our suffering by ragging me about American steam heat, and forced me, to his infinite delight, to admit that we aim to keep our rooms warmed to sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit. Needless to say, this don was an athlete. As the winter wore away, I repeatedly saw him in Balliol hockey squashes, chasing the ball about with the agility of a terrier pup. At nightfall, no doubt, he returned to his wife and family prepared to heat any room in the house to the required temperature. Heaven forbid that I should resent the opprobrium Englishmen heap upon our steam heat! I merely wish to point out that the English have failed as signally as we, though for the opposite reason, in making their houses habitable in the winter, and that an Englishman is forced into athletics to resist the deadly stupefaction of a Bœotian climate, and to keep his house warm.
In a sportsman it would be most ungracious to inveigh against English weather. The very qualities one instinctively curses make possible the full and varied development of outdoor games, which Americans admire without stint. Our football teams do day labor to get fit, and then, after a game or so, the sport is nipped in the bud. To teach our oarsmen the rudiments of the stroke we resort to months of the galley-slavery of tank-rowing. Our track athletes begin their season in the dead of winter with the dreary monotony of wooden dumb-bells and pulley-weights, while the baseball men are learning to slide for bases in the cage. In England the gymnasium is happily unknown. Winter and summer alike the sportsman lives beneath the skies, and the sports are so diverse and so widely cultivated that any man, whatever his mental or physical capacity, finds suitable exercise that is also recreation.
It is because of this universality of athletic sports that English training is briefer and less severe. The American makes, and is forced to make, a long and tedious business of getting fit, whereas an Englishman has merely to exercise and sleep a trifle more than usual, and this only for a brief period. Our oarsmen work daily from January to July, about six months, or did so beforeMr. Lehmann brought English ideas among us; the English 'varsity crews row together nine or ten weeks. Our football players slog daily for six or seven weeks; English teams seldom or never "practice," and play at most two matches a week. Our track athletes are in training at frequent intervals throughout the college year, and are often at the training-table six weeks; in England six weeks is the maximum period of training, and the men as a rule are given only three days a week of exercise on the cinder-track. To an American training is an abnormal condition; to an Englishman it is the consummation of the normal.
The moderation of English training is powerfully abetted by a peculiarity of the climate. The very dullness and depression that make exercise imperative also make it impossible to sustain much of it. The clear, bright American sky—the sky that renders it difficult for us to take the same delight in Italy as an Englishman takes, and leads us to prefer Ruskin's descriptions to the reality—cheers the American athlete; and the crispness of the atmosphere and its extreme variability keeps his nerves alert. An English athlete would go hopelessly stale on work that would scarcely key an American up to his highest pitch.
The effect of these differences on the temperament of the athlete is marked. The crispness and variety of our climate foster nervous vitality at the expense of physical vitality, while the equability of the English climate has the opposite effect. In all contests that require sustained effort—distance running and cross-country running, for example—we are in general far behind; while during the comparatively few years in which we have practiced athletic sports we have shown, on the whole, vastly superior form in all contests depending upon nervous energy—sprinting, hurdling, jumping, and weight-throwing.
Because of these differences of climate and of temperament, no rigid comparisons can be made between English and American training; but it is probably true that English athletes tend to train too little. Mr. Horan, the president of the Cambridge team that ran against Yale at New Haven, said as much after a very careful study of American methods; but he was not convinced that our thoroughness is quite worth while. The law of diminishing returns, he said, applies to training as to other things, so that, after a certain point, very little is gained even for a great sacrifice of convenience and pleasantness. Our American athletes are twice as rigid in denying the spirit foran advantage, Mr. Horan admitted, of enough to win by.
The remark is worth recording: it strikes the note of difference between English and American sportsmanship. After making all allowances for the conditions here and abroad that are merely accidental, one vital difference remains. For better or for worse, a sport is a sport to an Englishman, and whatever tends to make it anything else is not encouraged; as far as possible it is made pleasant, socially and physically. Contests are arranged without what American undergraduates call diplomacy; and they come off without jockeying. It is very seldom that an Englishman forgets that he is a man first and an athlete afterwards. Yet admirable as this quality is, it has its defects, at least to the transatlantic mind. Even more, perhaps, than others, Englishmen relish the joy of eating their hearts at the end of a contest, but they have no taste for the careful preparation that alone enables a man to fight out a finish to the best advantage. It is no doubt true, as the Duke of Wellington said, that the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of England; but for any inconsiderable sum I would agree to furnish a similar saying as to why the generals in South Africa ran into ambush after ambush.
In America, sportsmanship is almost a religion. Fellows mortify the flesh for months and leave no means untried that may help to bring honor to their college; or if they don't, public opinion brings swift and sure retribution. It is true that this leads to excesses. Rivalries are so strong that undergraduates have been known to be more than politic in arranging matches with each other. So the graduate steps in to moderate the ardor of emulation, and often ends by keeping alive ancient animosities long after they would have been forgotten in the vanishing generations of undergraduates. The Harvard eleven wants to play the usual football game; but it is not allowed to, because a committee of graduates sees fit to snub Yale; the athletic team wants to accept a challenge from Oxford and Cambridge, but it is not allowed to because Pennsylvania, which is not challenged, has a better team, and it is the policy of the university (which has an eye to its graduate schools) to ingratiate sister institutions. In a word, the undergraduates are left to manage their studies while the faculty manages their pastimes.
When a contest is finally on, excesses are rampant. Of occasional brutalities too much has perhaps been said; but more serious errors are unreproved. There is a tradition that it is the duty ofall non-athletes to inspire the 'varsity teams by cheering the play from the side lines; and from time to time one reads leading articles in the college papers exhorting men to back the teams. The spectator is thus given an important part in every contest, and after a 'varsity match he is praised or blamed, together with the members of the team, according to his deserts. Yale may outplay Harvard, but if Harvard sufficiently out-cheers Yale she wins, and to the rooters belong the praise. In baseball games especially, a season's championship is not infrequently decided by the fact that the partisans of one side are more numerous, or for other reasons make more noise. These are serious excesses, and are worthy of the pen of the robustest reformer; but after all has been said they are incidents, and in the slow course of time are probably disappearing.
The signal fact is that our young men do what they do with the diligence of enthusiasm, and with the devotion that inspires the highest courage. It is not unknown that, in the bitterness of failure, American athletes have burst into tears. When our English cousins hear of this they are apt to smile, and doubtless the practice is not altogether to be commended; but in the length and breadth of a man's experience there are only two or threethings one would wish so humbly as the devotion that makes it possible. Such earnestness is the quintessence of Americanism, and is probably to be traced to the signal fact that in the struggle of life we all start with a fighting chance of coming out on top. Whatever the game, so long as it is treated as a game, nothing could be as wholesome as the spirit that tends to make our young men play it for all it is worth, to do everything that can be done to secure victory with personal honor. In later years, when these men stand for the honor of the larger alma mater, on the field of battle or in the routine of administration, it is not likely that they will altogether forget the virtues of their youth.
The superiority of English sportsmanship arises, not from the spirit of the men, but from the breadth of the development of the sports, and this, climate aside, is the result of the division of the university into colleges. The average college of only a hundred and fifty men maintains two football teams—a Rugby fifteen and an Association eleven—an eight and two torpids, a cricket eleven, and a hockey eleven. Each college has also a set of athletic games yearly. If we add the men who play golf, lawn and court tennis, rackets and fives, who swim, box, wrestle, and who shoot on theranges of the gun club, the total of men schooled in competition reaches eighty to one hundred. A simple calculation will show that when so many are exercising daily, few are left for spectators. Not a bench is prepared, nor even a plank laid on the spongy English turf, to stand between the hanger-on and pneumonia. A man's place is in the field of strife; to take part in athletic contests is almost as much a matter of course as to bathe. Of late years there has been a tendency in England to believe that the vigor of undergraduates—and of all Englishmen, for the matter of that—is in decadence. As regards their cultivation of sports at least, the reverse is true. Contests are more numerous now than ever, and are probably more earnestly waged. What is called English decadence is in reality the increasing superiority of England's rivals.
Quite aside from the physical and moral benefit to the men engaged, this multiplication of contests has a striking effect in lessening the importance of winning or losing any particular one of them. It is more powerful than any other factor in keeping English sports free from the excesses that have so often characterized our sports. From time to time a voice is raised in America as of a prophet of despair demanding the abolition of inter-universitycontests. As yet the contests have not been abolished, and do not seem likely to be. Might it not be argued without impertinence that the best means of doing away with the excesses in question is not to have fewer contests, but more of them? If our universities were divided into residential units, corresponding roughly to the English colleges, the excesses in particular contests could scarcely fail to be mitigated; and what is perhaps of still higher importance, the great body of non-athletes would be brought directly under the influence of all those strong and fine traditions of undergraduate life which centre in the spirit of sportsmanship.
Note.For a discussion of the influences of climate in international athletics, seeAppendix II.
III
THE COLLEGE AS AN EDUCATIONAL FORCE
I
THE PASSMAN
Inthe educational life of Oxford, as in the social and athletic life, the distinctive feature, at least to the American mind, is the duality of organization in consequence of which an undergraduate is amenable first to his college and then to the university: the college teaches and the university examines. In America, so far as the undergraduate is concerned, the college and the university are identical: the instructor in each course of lectures is also the examiner. It follows from this that whereas in America the degree is awarded on the basis of many separate examinations—one in each of the sixteen or more "courses" which are necessary for the degree—in England it is awarded on the basis of a single examination. For three or four years the college tutor labors with his pupil, and the result of his labors is gauged by an examination, set and judged by the university. This system is characteristic of both Cambridge and Oxford, and for that matter, of allEnglish education; and the details of its organization present many striking contrasts to American educational methods.
Sir Isaac Newton's happy thought of having a big hole in his door for the cat and a little hole for the kitten must have first been held up to ridicule by an American. In England, the land of classes, it could hardly fail of full sympathy. In America there is but one hole of exit, though men differ in their proportions as they go out through it. In England there are passmen and classmen.
To say that the passman is the kitten would not be altogether precise. He is rather a distinct species of undergraduate. More than that, he is the historic species, tracing his origin quite without break to the primal undergraduate of the Middle Ages. He is a tradition from the time when the fund of liberal knowledge was so small that the university undertook to serve it all up in a pint-pot to whoever might apply. The pint-pot still exists at Oxford; and though the increasing knowledge of nine centuries long ago overflowed its brim, the passman still holds it forth trustfully to his tutor. The tutor patiently mingles in it an elixir compounded of as many educational simples as possible, and then the passman presents it to the examiners, who smile and dub him Bachelorof Arts. After three years, if he is alive and pays the sum of twelve pounds, they dub him Master.
The system for granting the pass degree is, in its broader outlines, the same as for all degrees. In the first examination—that for matriculation—it is identical for passmen and classmen. This examination is called "responsions," and is, like its name, of mediæval origin. It is the equivalent of the American entrance examination; but by one of the many paradoxes of Oxford life it was for centuries required to be taken after the pupil had been admitted into residence in one of the colleges. In the early Middle Ages the lack of preparatory schools made it necessary first to catch your undergraduate. It was not until the nineteenth century that a man could take an equivalent test before coming up, for example at a public school; but it is now fast becoming the rule to do so; and it is probable that all colleges will soon require an entrance examination. In this way two or three terms more of a student's residence are devoted to preparation for the two later and severer university tests.
The subjects required for matriculation are easy enough, according to our standards. Candidates offer: (1) The whole of arithmetic, and either (a) elementary algebra as far as simple equations involvingtwo unknown quantities, or (b) the first two books of Euclid; (2) Greek and Latin grammar, Latin prose composition, and prepared translation from one Greek and one Latin book. The passages for prepared translation are selected from six possible Greek authors and five possible Latin authors. The influence of English colonial expansion is evident in the fact that candidates who are not "European British subjects" may by special permission offer classical Sanskrit, Arabic, or Pali as a substitute for either Greek or Latin: the dark-skinned Orientals, who are so familiar a part of Oxford life, are not denied the right to study the classics of their native tongues. Thus the election of subjects is a well-recognized part of responsions, though the scope of the election does not extend to science and the modern languages.
Once installed in the college and matriculated in the university, both passman and honor man are examined twice and twice only. The first public examination, more familiarly called "moderations," or "mods," takes place in the middle of an undergraduate's course. Here the passmen have only a single subject in common with the men seeking honors, namely, the examination in Holy Scripture, or the Rudiments of Faith and Religion, more familiarly called "Divinners," which is tosay Divinities. The subject of the examination is the gospels of St. Luke and St. John in the Greek text; and either the Acts of the Apostles or the two books of Kings in the Revised Version. As in all Oxford examinations, cram-books abound containing a reprint of the questions put in recent examinations; and, as many of these questions recur from year to year, the student of Holy Scripture is advised to master them. A cram-book which came to my notice is entitled "The Undergraduate's Guide to the Rudiments of Faith and Religion," and contains, among other items of useful information: tables of the ten plagues; of the halting-places during the journey in the wilderness; of the twelve apostles; and of the seven deacons. The book recommends that the kings of Judah and Israel, the journeys of St. Paul, and the Thirty-nine Articles shall be committed to memory. The obviously pious author of this guide to the rudiments of these important accomplishments speaks thus cheerfully in his preface: "The compiler feels assured that if candidates will but follow the plan he has suggested, no candidate of even ordinary ability need have the least fear of failure." According to report, it is perhaps not so easy to acquire the rudiments of faith and religion. In a paper set some years ago, as one ofthe examiners informed me, a new and unexpected question was put: "Name the prophets and discriminate between the major and the minor." One astute passman wrote: "Far be it from me to make discriminations between these wise and holy men. The kings of Judah and Israel are as follows." Unless a man passes the examination, he has to take it again, and the fee to the examiner is one guinea. "This time I go through," exclaimed an often ploughed passman. "I need these guineas for cigars." Those who are not "European British subjects" may substitute certain sacred works in Sanskrit, Arabic, or Pali; and those who object for conscientious scruples to a study of the Bible may substitute the Phædo of Plato; but the sagacious undergraduate knows that if he does this he must have no conscientious scruples against harder work.
In America there is no such examination, so far as I know. At Harvard an elective course in the history and literature of the Jews is given by the Semitic department; and if this does not insure success in acquiring the rudiments of faith and religion, it was, on one occasion at least, the means of redoubling the attendance at chapel. Just before the final examination, it transpired that the professor in charge of the course was conductingmorning service, and was giving five minute summaries of Jewish history. For ten days the front pews were crowded with waistcoats of unwonted brilliance; the so-called sports who had taken the course as a snap were glad to grind it up under the very best auspices.
Let me not be misunderstood. In the long run, the English undergraduates no doubt add greatly to their chances of spiritual edification. At the very least they gain a considerable knowledge of one of the great monuments of the world's literature. In America the Bible is much less read in families than in England, so that it would seem much more important to prescribe a course in Biblical history and literature. At one time Professor Child gave a course in Spenser and the English Bible, and is said to have been moved at times when reading before his classes to a truly Elizabethan access of tears. Some years before the great master died, he gave up the course in despair at the Biblical ignorance of his pupils. The usual Harvard undergraduate cannot name five of the prophets, with or without discrimination, or be certain of five of the kings of Judah. As I write this, I am painfully uncertain as to whether there were as many as five.
But to return to our muttons. The remainingsubjects for pass moderations are: (1) Portions of three classic authors, two Greek and one Latin, or two Latin and one Greek. The passages of each author to be studied are prescribed, but the candidate may elect, with certain slight limitations, from eight Greek and eight Latin authors "of the best age." As in the case of responsions and Holy Scripture, Sanskrit, Arabic, or Pali may be substituted for either Greek or Latin. The examination covers not only grammar and literature, but any question arising out of the text. Besides these are required: (2) Latin prose composition; (3) sight translation of Greek and Latin; and (4) either logic or the elements of geometry and algebra.
The final pass examination allows a considerable range of election. Three general subjects must be offered. At least one of these must be chosen from the following: Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Persian, German, and French. If a candidate wishes, he may choose two of his three subjects in ancient language, literature, and history, or in modern language, literature, history, and economics. The remaining one or two subjects may be chosen from a dozen courses ranging through the elements of mathematics, natural science, law, and theology. This range of choice is very different from that in America, in that a student is not permitted freelyto elect subjects without reference to one another. For the pass degree, no considerable originality or grasp of the subject is necessary, any more than for an undistinguished degree in an American college; but the body of necessary facts is pretty sure to be well ordered, if not digested. The idea of grouping electives is the fundamental difference between English and American education. In the case of the honor man it will be seen to be of chief importance.
In order to take the Oxford degree, it is further necessary to be in residence three years, and a man may reside four years before going up for his final examination. The period of study—or loafing—may be broken in various ways; and it is characteristic that though a man may anticipate his time and take his last examination before the last term of his third year, he is required to reside at the university, studies or no studies, until the minimum residence is completed. Nothing could indicate more clearly the importance which is attached to the merely social side of university life.
It is, in fact, as a social being that the passman usually shines. You may know him most often from the fact that you sight him in the High by a waistcoat of many colors. At night he is apt to evade the statutes as to academicals; but if hewears his gown, he wraps it about his neck as if it were a muffler, and tilts his mortar-board at all angles. He is the genius of the fox terrier and the bulldog pipe; he rides to the hounds, and is apt in evading the vice-chancellor's regulations as to tandems and four-in-hands. Or perhaps he sits comfortably in his rooms discoursing lightly of the impious philosophies that are the studies of the classman, and writes Horatian verse for the "Isis" and the "Oxford Magazine." He does anything, in fact, that is well-bred, amusing, and not too strenuous. Curiously enough, it sometimes happens that he does sufficient reading on his own account to give him no little real culture. Of late there has been a reaction in favor of the pass school as affording a far better general education.
If the passman loiters through the three or four years, it is mainly the fault—or the virtue—of the public school he comes from. Of late the best public schools have had so strong and admirable an influence that boys have often been kept in them by their parents until they reach the age limit, generally nineteen. By this time they have anticipated most of the studies required for a pass degree in the university, and find little or nothing to do when they go up but to evade their tutors and to "reside." It is by this means, as the satiristlong ago explained, that Oxford has become an institution of such great learning. Every freshman brings to it a little knowledge and no graduate takes any away.
There is reason in all this. In the first place, as I have said, the passman is the historical undergraduate, and little short of a convulsion could disestablish him—that is the best of British reasons. Moreover, to be scrupulously just, the passman knows quite as much as the American student who barely takes a degree by cramming a few hours with a venal tutor before each of his many examinations, and perhaps more than the larger proportion of German students who confine their serious interests to the duel and the Kneipe, and never graduate. And then, the Oxonian argues amiably, if it were not for the pass schools, the majority of the passmen would not come to Oxford at all, and would spend their impressionable period in some place of much less amenity. Clearly, they learn all that is necessary for a gentleman to know, and are perhaps kept from a great deal that is dangerous to young fellows with money and leisure. It means much to the aristocracy and nobility of England that, whatever their ambitions and capacities, they are encouraged by the pursuit of a not too elusive A.B. to stay fouryears in the university. Even the ambitious student profits by the arrangement. Wherever his future may lie, in the public service, in law, medicine, or even the church, it is of advantage to know men of birth and position—of far greater advantage, from the common sensible English point of view, than to have been educated in an atmosphere of studious enthusiasm and exact scholarship.
II
THE HONOR SCHOOLS
Themodern extension of the world's knowledge, with the corresponding advance in educational requirements, which are perhaps the most signal results of the nineteenth century, could not fail to exert a powerful influence on all university teaching. In the United States, the monument to its influence is the elective system. In England, it is the honor schools. Both countries felt the inadequacy of the antique pint-pot of learning. The democratic New World has not dreamed of making a sharp distinction between the indifferent and the ambitious. Under the lead of the scientific spirit of the German universities, it has placed the noblest branches of human knowledge on a par with the least twig of science. With characteristic conservatism England kept the old pint-pot for the unscholarly, to whom its contents are still of value, though extending its scope to suit the changing spirit of the age; and for those who felt the new ambitions it made new pint-pots, each one of which shouldcontain the essence gathered from a separate field of learning. The new pint-pots are the honor schools, and the children of the new ambition are the honor men.
The honor schools of Oxford are eight in number. Here again the English conservatism is evident. The oldest of them, literæ humaniores, which was at first the only honor school, has for its subject-matter a thorough view of classical language, literature, and thought. It is anédition de luxeof the old pass school. Because of the nobility of its proportions, it is familiarly called "greats," and it justifies its name by enrolling almost half of all Oxford candidates for the honor degree. An overwhelming majority of famous Oxford graduates have taken their degree in "greats." The other schools are sometimes known as the minor schools. Mathematics was originally a part of the school in literæ humaniores, but was soon made into a separate school. Since then schools have been established in six new subjects—natural science, jurisprudence, modern history, theology, Oriental studies, and English. Under our elective system, a student continues through his four years, choosing each year at random, or as the fates decree, this, that, or the other brief "course." Under thehonor system a man decides sooner or later which one of the several branches he most desires, and sets out to master it.
An Oxford man's decision may be made at the outset; but far the larger number of men defer the choice. They do this by reading for moderations, for pass moderations as well as honor mods may be followed by an honor school at finals. The subject-matter for honor mods is, roughly speaking, the same as for pass mods—the classics and kindred studies; but the field covered is considerably more extended, and to take a high class the student is required to exhibit in his examination papers no little grasp of the subjects as a whole, and if possible to develop his own individuality in the process. Having done with moderations, an honor man is forced to choose a final school. The logical sequence of honor mods is literæ humaniores; but one may choose instead modern history, theology, Oriental studies, or English.
The men who commit themselves to a choice at the outset are those who go in for science or jurisprudence. These men begin by reading for a form of moderations known as science preliminaries or jurisprudence preliminaries.
The exact sequence of examinations is fixed onlyby common sense. The school of history is open to those who have taken pass mods, and even to those who have taken the jurisprudence preliminary, though mods is usually preferred in order to give a man the use of the necessary languages. If a science man's chief work is to be in astronomy or physics, which require some mathematics, he may take the mathematical mods, and devote only the second half of his course to science.
Even after a man has chosen his subject and begun to work on it with his tutor, there is considerable range of election. As classical mods are supposed to cover all the subjects essential to polite education, election is mainly a question as to the ancient authors read. If a man knows what final school he is to enter, he may choose his authors accordingly. Thus, a history man chooses the ancient historians; a man who intends to enter the school in English literature, the ancient poets and dramatists. In addition to such authors, all candidates for classical mods choose, according to their future needs, one of four subjects: the history of classical literature, comparative classical philology, classical archæology, and logic. The preliminary examinations in natural science and in jurisprudence are concerned with a general view of the field, and thus do not admit of muchvariation, whatever the branch to be pursued later; and the same is true of mathematical moderations. A man who chooses any one of these three honor schools has made the great choice of bidding good-by to the classics.
In the final schools the range of choice is greater than at moderations, and is greater in some schools than in others. Literæ humaniores offers the least scope for election. The reason is that the subject-matter is a synthetic view of the classic world entire. Still, in so vast a field, a student perforce selects, laying emphasis on those aspects of the ancient world which he considers (or which he expects the examining board to consider) of most interest and importance. It has been objected even at Oxford that such a course of study gives a student little or no training in exact scholarship. The examination statutes accordingly give a choice of one among no less than forty special subjects, the original sources of which a man may thresh out anew in the hope of adding his iota to the field of science; and, on six months' notice, a student may, under approval, select a subject of his own. The unimportance of this part of the "greats" curriculum is evident in the fact that it is recommended, not required.
The history school requires the student to coverthe constitutional and political history of England entire, political science and economy, with economic history, constitutional law, and political and descriptive geography. It also requires a special subject "carefully studied with reference to the original authorities," and a period of general history. If a student does not aim at a first or second class at graduation, he may omit certain parts of all this. In any case, he has to choose from the general history of the modern world one special period for a more detailed examination. In the school of natural science, the student, after filling in the broad outlines of the subject for his preliminary, must choose for his final examination one of the following seven subjects: physics, chemistry, animal physiology, zoölogy, botany, geology, and astronomy. Besides the written examination, a "practical" examination of three hours is required to show the student's ability at laboratory work. These three honor schools are the most important, and may be regarded as representative. After a man has taken one honor degree, for example, in literæ humaniores, he may take another, for example, in modern history. He then becomes a double honor man, and if he has got a first class in both schools, he is a "double first."
In America, the election of studies goes by fragmentarysubjects, and the degree is awarded for passing some four such subjects a year, the whole number being as disconnected, even chaotic, as the student pleases or as chance decrees. In England, the degree is granted for final proficiency in a coherent and well-balanced course of study; but within this not unreasonable limit there is the utmost freedom of election. The student first chooses what honor school he shall pursue, and then chooses the general lines along which he shall pursue it.
III
THE TUTOR
Inpreparing for his two "public examinations," the pupil is solely in the hands of a college tutor. Any familiar account of the Oxford don is apt to make him appear to the American, and especially to the German mind, a sufficiently humble person. His first duty is the very unprofessional one of making newcomers welcome. He invites his pupils to breakfast and to dinner, and introduces them to their fellows so that they shall enter easily into the life of the college; he tells them to go in for one or another of the various undergraduate activities. As a teacher, moreover, his position is strikingly similar to that of the venal tutors in our universities, who amiably keep lame ducks from halting, and temper the frost of the examination period to gilded grasshoppers. It is all this that makes the American scholar so apt to smile at the tutor, and the German, perhaps, to sniff. The tutor is not easily put down. If he replies with anything more than a British silence, it is to say that after all education cannot be quitedissociated from a man's life among his fellows. And then there is the best of all English reasons why the tutor should think well of his vocation: it is approved by custom and tradition. Newman, Pusey, Jowett, Pater, Stubbs, Lang, and many such were tutors, and they thought it well worth while to spend the better part of each day with their pupils.
Homely as are the primary duties of the tutor, it is none the less necessary that certain information should be imparted. The shadow of the examiners looms across the path twice in the three or four years of an undergraduate's life. There is no dodging it: in order to get a degree, certain papers must be written and well written. Here is where the real dignity of the tutor resides, the attribute that distinguishes him from all German and American teachers. He is responsible to the college that his pupils shall acquit themselves well before the examiners,—that the reputation of the college shall be maintained. By the same token, the examiners are responsible to the university that its degrees shall be justly awarded, so that the course of education in England is a struggle of tutor against examiner. In Germany and in America, an instructor is expected to be a master of his subject; he may be or may not be—andusually is not—a teacher. In England, a tutor may be a scholar, and often is not. His success is measured first and foremost by the excellence of the papers his pupils write. Is Donkin of Balliol a good tutor? Well, rather, he has got more firsts than any don in Oxford; by which is meant of course that his pupils have got the firsts. A college is rated partly by its number of blues and partly by its number of firsts. For a tutor to lead his pupils to success is as sacred a duty as for an athletic undergraduate to play for the university. The leisurely, not to say loafing, tutor of eighteenth-century tradition has been reformed out of existence. If the modern tutor fails of any high attainment as a scholar, it is mainly because he is required to be a very lively, strenuous, and efficient leader of youth.
The means by which the tutor conducts his charges in the narrow path to success in the schools are characteristic. The secret lies in gaining the good-will of the pupil. Thus any breakfasts, luncheons, and dinners that the hospitable tutor gives to his pupils while they are learning the ways of the place are bread cast upon the waters in a very literal sense. For a decent fellow to neglect the just wishes of a teacher to whom he is indebted is easy enough on occasions; but systematicallyto shirk a genuine debt of gratitude without losing caste with one's self requires supreme ingenuity. If you don't want to get into the clutches of your tutor, don't take the least chance of getting to like him. This is the soundest advice ever given by the wary upper classman. It has not been ordained by nature that the soul of the teacher is sib to the soul of the taught, but clearly, by exercising the humanities, the irrepressible conflict may be kept within bounds.