Life — December 21, 1911 — page 16: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

a I a Athletes and Advertisement M*. MOORFIELD STOREY of Boston found occasion to say the other day: The people of Boston and vicinity are paying altogether too much money for football and other Harvard athletics and the students are giving athletics an amount of time and thought out of all proportion to their importance and which ought to be devoted to better things. rome No doubt. But there may be consolation in the reflection that the money might be spent and the time and thought given to some- thing much worse. And probably the advertisement of athletics is out of proportion to the real concern about them, large as that is. For instance, Mr. Clough, a teacher at Phillips Academy, Andover, who died the other day, was described in the Boston Transcript in the notice of his funeral as “ former captain of the Andover Academy baseball nine, and since his graduation an assistant instructor and baseball coach.” And it was told how the honorary pallbearers at his funeral included the “captain of the academy track team and student president of the school,” So and So “of the football téam,” Blank of the football team and a member of the ice hockey team” the “ cap- tain of the baseball team and fullback of the football team,” a member of the track team, another member of the football team, the “captain of next year's football team” and the “ mana- ger of the football team and captain of the ice hockey team This tale of athletic heroes who followed a teacher's bier makes one smile, but its absurd- ity lies merely in its being such an overadver- tisement of athletics. The teacher, Mr. Clough, was, no doubt, primarily a teacher, and, secondarily, a man in- terested in sports. He is made to ap- pear primarily a baseball player, and lentally a teacher. That is the sarcasm of advertising. Sports make “ copy"; teaching doesn't. But we suspect—though it may be dis- puted—that teaching is still the main proposition in a school like Phillips- Andover, and sports no more—or not much more—than an important inci- dent of school life. S So at Harvard, or any other college, ASPIRATION it isn’t so much that there is an unhealthy excess of athletics as that athletics get an unhealthy excess of advertisement. Under the advertised of newcomers with reputations as Improving France yet unspotted. Surely it is one way ORD comes from France that the first six months of 1911 show an excess of deaths over births of 18,- 279. These are thought to be discour- ing figures, especially as in the cor- responding six months in 1910 the Lirths exceeded the deaths by 21,189. But why take a discouraged view? In that first half of this year the deaths were 404,278 and the births 385,999. Observe that the deaths included many persons who were not as good as they should have been, while the births are of reforming France to have the dam- aged goods cleared off her shelves a trifle faster than the fresh goods fill them. An Estimate « OCTOR, how much will this operation cost me?” “How much have you got?” “About a hundred.” “Then you ought to be able to bor- row four hundred more.” athlete there is quite apt to be a val- uable unadvertised man who will do his work in the world. All Roads Lead to Reno IRST DIVORCEE: I was enough to marry for money. Seconp Divorcer: And I was fool enough to marry for love! fool G NERALLY speaking—Mr. Taft. comicbookMee 2