This, then, is what cricket and boating, battledore and archery, shinney and skating, fishing, hunting, shooting, and baseball mean, namely, that there is a joyous spontaneity in human beings; and thus Nature, by means of the sporting world, by means of a great number of very imperfect, undignified, and sometimes quite disreputable mouthpieces, is perpetually striving to say something deserving of far nobler and clearer utterance; something which statesmen, lawgivers, preachers, and educators would do well to lay to heart. My children, she would say, are not intended to be made working machines; they have capacities for joy, for spontaneous action, for doing some pleasant thing for the mere sake of doing it, without any regard to gain or profit, whether it be of money or anything else; and by obeying my dictates, they will find riches which they never sought for, will obtain gifts they never asked.
Why, a fast young man at an English University too often learns no good thing there, except to play a capital game at cricket, have a good seat upon a horse, pull an oar till he drops, and to have a general belief in the omnipotence of pluck! And I can tell you that is no bad education too, as far as it goes. I am perfectly well aware that fast young men too often learn other and worse things than these, learn to drink, and swear, and debauch, and to spend as fast as possible in riotous living the manhood and strength which God has given them. But this I know and publicly declare, that it is this love of manly sports which keeps the fast young men of England from utter corruption and decay. Such men, renowned in their school and college days as good cricketers, oarsmen or riders, were the men that made Alma, Inkermann, and Balaklava possible; who have just done battle at fearful odds on the burning plains of India, on behalf of helpless women and slaughtered babies; and those whom their strong right arm could not save, it was able to avenge! The iron endurance which they had gained in many a bloodless contest, stood them in good stead there, when all their manhood was needed, if ever it was; and over those that nobly died there, methinks that I can see the Genius of England weep bitter tears, and thus speak with deep self-reproach:—"Ah! sons of mine! loved and early lost! ye whom I could not teach, whom no one in all my broad lands could teach, how to unite the virtuous, wise and holy soul, together with the soul joyous and free! Alas! for me, that ye had to die, before I could know how noble ye were! that your cold bodies, fallen on the field, wounds all in front, and none behind, would be so many poor dumb mouths to tell me of the untold wealth which I have in my children, those very ones who too often are nought but shame and grief to me!" Dear, noble old England! if God will teach her this wisdom, her old heart will beat on bravely for a thousand years to come.
The preponderance of the animal, the bodily element, produces fast young men; and fast young men, and boys tending to become such, are the problem of society, the terror of the peace-loving, money-making world, and the scandal of the Educator, as he himself feels well enough his own impotence in dealing with them.
I have seen many an Educator who has felt that he ought to get at these young rebellious forces, but who does not know the way, and despairingly wonders why he cannot do so. Friend! I would say, no man can influence another, unless he has something akin to Him. What do you think gives these blacklegs, men of not a tithe of your force and talent, such power over them? Why, it is community of nature, interests in common. But what interests have you in common with a fast young man? You know nothing that he knows, you admire nothing that he admires; and until you do really get a community of interest with him, you will be wide asunder as the poles, and the fast young man will remain, as he has hitherto remained, the one disgraceful problem which modern education cannot solve.
If an educator or college tutor wishes to influence this class of his scholars, or if a clergyman wishes to gain the souls of this part of his congregation, the one most difficult to deal with, let him join with them in some manly game, and let him assuredly know that whatever true manhood he has will stand him in good stead, and nothing else: nothing but real vital religion, real nobleness of character will be of any use in the cricket-field or the row-boat; and this will hold its own here as well as elsewhere.
Once, then, establish a community of interest on any one subject with young men, and you open to yourself a door, by which all good may enter. Nature, dear friends, makes nothing in vain, and it is of such infinite importance that strength of limb, readiness of eye and hand, physical vigor in short, should be transmitted from generation to generation, that she keeps producing fast young men, in spite of the thousand excesses which they commit, and will do so, until the ablest and wisest human minds take the matter in hand, and see to it that this part of Human Nature has its proper and legitimate food, guided by mind, thought, and reverence, instead of being allowed to run riot in all manner of wantonness.
The sporting world, then, with its manly games and manly sports, gives us the means which are needed by the community at large for physical education; and the future educators of the country must be taught to love these manly games at school and at college, and then they will be able to disseminate them; whereas, at present, educators in this country are almost entirely ignorant of any manly games whatever. "But are not these games very dangerous," asks a careful mamma; "don't you find that boys get hurt very much by them? I have heard of some one who got his teeth knocked down his throat by them. Somebody else got his head hurt at shinney and so that was put a stop to, I believe, at Mr.——'s school." Such mammas, doubtless, put into the hands of their children some good little book, with a narration of this sort. Little Johnny was told by his mamma not to climb trees. He was a good boy, and generally obedient. But one day he was in the garden of one of his schoolfellows, who asked him to climb a cherry tree; he forgot his mother's command, and went up, but after he had climbed nearly to the top his foot slipped, and down he tumbled through the branches on to the ground. He cried very much, and could not move, so they had to put him upon a shutter and carry him home. The doctor found that his leg was broken; the pain was dreadful when he had it set, &c. &c.; the drama ending by Johnny throwing his arms round his mother's neck, and declaring that if he ever got well, he would never disobey his dear, dear mother any more!
The good people who write these edifying stories never seem to think whether it was wise for mamma to forbid Johnny to climb a tree. Monkeys are never forbidden to do so, and I seldom hear anything of their falling off. Poor people's children climb trees, and there does not seem to be an extraordinary increase of juvenile mortality on this account. What should you say if some hard-hearted person, myself for instance, were to say to the dear mother of little Johnny, "Dear Madam, you yourself, I grieve to say, were the cause of Johnny's accident; you have habitually prevented him from doing anything which would quicken his perceptions and strengthen his limbs. He must not soil his pinafore, he must not get his hands dirty, and above all he must not play at any games which make his hair untidy, or tear his clothes. In fact, you have forbidden him to do precisely those things which Nature prompted him to do. He has generally been very obedient, you say, and therefore his bodily powers have become weaker instead of stronger. Well, the temptation came, the unused and untrustworthy limbs were summoned to act, his consciousness of doing wrong enfeebled him still further, and made them still more nervous. He went up the tree, and the natural consequence was, that he fell."
This, in substance, is the answer to all questions of this class. I have played at cricket or shinney, or boated, since I was nine years old. During the last three years and a half, I have played at one or the other almost every day. I have played at shinney, or hockey, as we call it, all through the winter, through snow a foot deep, and when the thermometer was below zero; I have played at cricket in summer with the thermometer at 90, and I have never yet seen one serious accident. The fact is, that I have a theory that Nature loves young men and boys, and love to aid them in their sports. She sends her ice and snow to educate them and make them hardy, while we are sitting by the stove and abusing the weather. She won't let them be hurt half as much by a blow or a fall, as older people who do not love her half as well. She breaks the young one's fall, and herself puts the plaster on his little fingers. She is delighted at every conquest that these young children of hers make over herself, just like some big boxer she stands, who is teaching his boy to box. He feints and threatens and looks big, but who so pleased as he when the young one gets in his one two!
Again, the danger is little or nothing to the daring and courageous. The fellow that isn't afraid of the ball, is scarcely ever hurt. He defends himself with eye and hand. The coward is the one most likely to get hurt. I think that there is just enough risk in these games to engender a manly contempt for pain, and a bold handling of a danger. If the cricket ball were a soft affair, it would be a game for babies not boys.