In order not to interfere with the examinations, they ought not to be held any later than the first week in June, for the young men who participate in the games will need two or three weeks at least after the meeting to devote entirely to their studies. In order to gain the good-will and obtain the support of the older heads, the managers should do all they can to arrange matters so that the games will not interfere with school-work. There is no reason why they should interfere with school-work if properly managed.
The objection has been made that the national games added one more occasion to the many that already take up the time of the schoolboy athletes. This is perhaps true for the present; but I doubt if next year or thereafter it would be the case, because as soon as the schools become convinced that the national games are to be the most important of the year so far as scholastic athletics are concerned, the games of the several interscholastic associations will take a secondary position, and the school games of the institutions making up the interscholastic associations will fall into a third stage of importance, and probably fall away entirely. In other words, instead of having a series of school games leading up to the interscholastic games of the several leagues in various parts of the country, the schoolboy athletes will look upon their interscholastic meeting as a sort of trial heat for the national games instead of, as they have heretofore, a final heat to decide the supremacy of their own association.
The mere fact that at the national games the best athletes of the great centres will be pitted against one another is sufficient to make that occasion the most interesting and, beyond any question, the most important of the year. I do not believe that there should be so many track-athletic meetings as there have been in the past; I mean that I think it is a poor plan to have scholastic meetings open to members of schools belonging to the Interscholastic League, for the result soon comes to be that each scholastic meeting is practically an interscholastic event, and this may easily be seen by looking at the list of entries at these various scholastic games.
The best plan is to have each league hold its meeting, pick the first two men for a team to represent that league at the national games, and then let the national games be the decisive contest in track athletics for the year.
"TRACK ATHLETICS IN DETAIL."—Illustrated.—8vo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1.25.
The Graduate.
A TRIBUTE.
Pa says his mother used to make
The finest pies he ever see,
But those my dear old mommie makes
Are plenty good enough for me.
Indeed, I like 'em all so much,
It wouldn't fill me with dismay
If some big tyrant made me eat
A dozen slices every day.