The New York Interscholastic Tennis Tournament, under the auspices of Columbia College, had a large entry list that required three days to be played off. The games were all characterized by steady work rather than by any particularly brilliant play, and the championship was won by Waltz of the Leal School, Plainfield. He met Wigham of Harvard School in the finals, and had a comparatively easy time of it, defeating the New-Yorker in three straight sets—6-1, 6-2, 6-4. He will go to Newport for the big Interscholastic tournament this summer, and will meet the other school league champions, Ware of the N.E.I.S.A.A., Sheldon of the Connecticut I.S.A.A., and Beaman, who won in the Pennsylvania I.A.L. Tournament at Princeton. I consider Ware the strongest player of this quartet, and expect to see him win at Newport. He will be heard from at the Longwood Tournament next Saturday too.
The prospects of Lawrenceville being victorious over Andover in the baseball game to-morrow have been daily increasing, and I believe now that the Jerseymen will win. Andover does not seem to be able to reduce the average of errors made in her games so far, and her players on the left-field side must play a sharp game if they wish to offset Lawrenceville's good batters. St. Mark's School, with little over a hundred boys to pick a nine from, defeated the Phillips Academy team, two weeks ago, by the score of 6-3, and the latter suffered another bad defeat from the Yale Freshmen a few days later. St. Mark's victory was in a considerable measure due to the effective pitching of White, who held the Andover men down to six hits. The features of the game, besides White's work in the box, were the catching of Drew, Andover's Captain, and the fielding of Folger. Mills, too, made a beautiful running catch of a long fly. I am surprised that the St. Mark's batters were able to get seven hits off Greenway, as it has been Andover's boast that their battery is as good as any in the schools. It is; and I surmise that Greenway had an off-day at Southboro. He must do better to-morrow or Lawrenceville will have an easy time with their Massachusetts rivals. The Jersey players have greatly improved the past week, especially in team-work. They have won within the past fifteen days two games from the Pennington Seminary's strong team, they have defeated the Princeton Freshmen, and they got excellent practice out of their match with the Princeton 'Varsity. Andover will have the advantage of home grounds and the crowd, but they will need more than that to pile up the runs.
A new invention by Professor E. W. Scripture, of Yale, will be interesting to all track athletes. The apparatus is one that will measure a runner's "reaction time." This time is that which elapses between the moment the pistol is discharged and the moment the sprinter starts. The brief period between these two moments is taken up by nature in transmitting the sound from the ear to the brain, and the impulse to run from the brain to the muscles of the legs. Professor Scripture believes that the length of reaction time is frequently an important factor, and he argues that with a runner it must be reduced to the shortest possible limit, as one-fifth of a second counts in a race. By experiments the inventor has proved to his own satisfaction that the time which elapses between the firing of the starter's pistol and the actual start of the runner is long enough to influence the winning of a race. The reaction time of a runner may vary from one-sixth to one-third of a second. The new invention is an arrangement by which a runner's reaction time may be measured to within the one-thousandth part of a second. The starter's pistol is arranged so that an electric contact is broken when the pistol goes off. A thread is attached to the right foot of the runner, and this thread breaks an electric contact the moment he starts. The distance marked on a cylinder by these two contacts measures the individual's reaction time. Sport may soon reach such a scientific stage of advancement that sprinters will be handicapped with reference to their "reaction time."
The Graduate.
Charlotte Cushman, a celebrated actress, was filling an engagement at the opera-house in B——. A man in the gallery created such a disturbance that it seriously impeded the progress of the play, and finally brought it to a standstill. Immediately the audience, furious with anger, cried: "Throw him over! Throw him over!"
Miss Temple stepped to the edge of the footlights, and in a sweet and gentle voice exclaimed: "No, I pray you, don't throw him over. I beg of you, dear friends, don't throw him over, but kill him where he is!"
An Irishman was on trial for committing a burglary, and had conducted his own case. The evidence against him was strong, and the judge, after summing up, remarked, while looking at the prisoner, that he could detect the rascal and villain in his face. "Hold there!" shouted the prisoner. "I object; that is a personal reflection."