The life of the hall would not of course be as strictly regulated as the life in an English college—perhaps no more strictly than in any other American college building. If in the hope of creating a closer community feeling stricter rules were adopted, they should be adopted, as in a mediæval hall, only by consent of the undergraduates.
Such a hall would develop athletic teams of its own, and would produce university athletes. Under the present arrangement, when the poorer students are members of university teams, they may, and often do, become honorary members of the university clubs; but their lack of means and sometimes of the manner of the world make it difficult for them to be at home in the clubs; their social life is usually limited to a small circle of friends. If they had first been trained in the life of a hall, they would more easily fall in with the broader life outside; and instead of being isolated as at present, they would exert no small influence both in their hall and in the university. Few things could be better for the general life of the undergraduate than the coöperation of such men, and few things could be better for the members of a hall than to be brought by means of its leading members into close connection with the life of the university.
If such a hall were successful, it could not fail to attract serious students of all sorts and conditions. At Oxford, Balliol has for generations been known as in the main unfashionable and scholarly; but it is seldom without a blue or two, and its eight has often been at the head of the river. As a result of all this, it never ceases to attract the more serious men from the aristocracy and even the nobility. In America, the success of one residential hall would probably lead to the establishment of others, so that in the end the life of the university might be given all the advantages of a dual organization.
No change could be more far reaching and beneficial. The American institutions of the present are usually divided into two classes, the university, or "large college," and the "small college." The merit of the large colleges is that those fortunately placed in them gain greater familiarity with the ways of the world and of men, while for those who wish it, they offer more advanced instruction—the instruction characteristic of German universities. But to the increasing number of undergraduates who are not fortunately placed, their very size is the source of unhappiness; and for those undergraduates who wish anything else than scientific instruction, their virtues become merely a detriment. It is for this reason that many wise parents still prefer to intrust the education of their sons to the small colleges. These small colleges possess many of the virtues of the English universities; they train the mind and cultivate it, and at the same time develop the social man. If now the American university were to divide its undergraduate department into organized residential halls, it would combine the advantages of the two types of American institution, which are the two types of instruction the world over. Already our college life at its best is as happy as the college life in England; and the educational advantages of the four or five of our leading universities are rapidly becoming equal to those of the four or five leading universities in Germany. A combination of the residential hall and the teaching university would reproduce the highest type of the university of the Middle Ages; and in proportion as life and knowledge have been bettered in six hundred years, it would better that type. England has lost the educational virtues of the mediæval university, while Germany, in losing the residential halls, has lost its peculiar social virtues. When the American university combines the old social life with the new instruction, it will be the most perfect educational instruction in the history of civilization.
APPENDIX
I. ATHLETIC TRAINING IN ENGLAND
In one or two particulars it seemed to me that we might learn from the English methods of training. On the Oxford team we took long walks every other day instead of track work. Our instructions were to climb all the hills in our way. This was in order to bring into play new muscles as far as possible, so as to rest those used in running. Though similar walks are sometimes given in America as a preliminary "seasoning," our training, for months before a meeting, is confined to the track. This is not unwise as long as a runner's stride needs developing; and in the heat of our summers such walks as the English take might sometimes prove exhausting. Yet my personal observations convinced me that for distance runners—and for sprinters, too, perhaps—the English method is far better. Under our training the muscles often seem overpowered by nervous lassitude; at the start of a race I have often felt it an effort to stand. In England there was little or none of this; we felt, as the bottle-holders are fond of putting it, "like a magnum of champagne."
This idea of long walks, which the English have arrived at empirically, has been curiously approved in America by scientific discovery. It has been shown that after muscles appear too stiff from exhaustion to move, they can be excited to action by electric currents; while the motor nerves on being examined after such fatigue are found to be shrunken and empty, as in extreme old age. The limit of muscular exertion is thus clearly determined by the limit of the energy of the motor nerve. Now in a perfectly trained runner, the heart and lung must obviously reach their prime simultaneously with the motor nerves used in running; but since these organs are ordained to supply the entire system with fuel, they will usually require a longer time to reach prime condition than any single set of nerves. Thus continual track work is likely to develop the running nerves to the utmost before the heart and lungs are at prime. Conversely stated, if the development of the running nerves is retarded so as to keep pace with the development of the heart and lungs, the total result is likely to be higher. All this amounts to what any good English trainer will tell you—that you must take long walks on up and down grades in order to rest your running muscles and at the same time give your heart and lungs plenty of work—that is, in order to keep from getting "track stale."
The amount of work we did from day to day will best be understood, perhaps, by quoting one or two of the training-cards. For the hundred yards the training during the final ten days was as follows: Monday and Tuesday, sprints (three or four dashes of sixty yards at top speed); Wednesday, a fast 120 yards at the Queen's Club grounds; Thursday, walk; Friday, sprints; Saturday, 100 yards trial at Queen's Club; Sunday, walk; Monday, light work at Queen's Club; Tuesday, easy walk; Wednesday, inter-varsity sports. The man for whom this card was written happened to be over weight and short of training, or he would have had less track work. If he had been training for the quarter in addition to the hundred, he would have had fewer sprints, and, instead of the fast 120, a trial quarter a week before the sports, with perhaps a fast 200 on the following Friday. For the mile, the following is a characteristic week's work, ending with a trial: Sunday, walk; Monday, one lap (1⁄3 mile); Tuesday, two laps, fast-ish; Wednesday, walk; Thursday, easy mile; Friday, walk; Saturday, a two lap trial (at the rate of 4.30 for the mile). For the three miles, the following is a schedule of the first ten days (the walks are unusually frequent because the "first string" had a bruise on the ball of his foot): Monday, walk; Tuesday, walk; Wednesday, two slow laps at the Queen's Club; Thursday, walk; Friday, walk; Saturday, a long run at the Queen's Club; Sunday, walk; Monday, four laps, fast-ish, at the Queen's Club; Tuesday, walk; Wednesday, inter-varsity sports. The chief difference between this work and what we should give in America is in the matter of walking.