Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 205, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 August 1911 — HIS SPORTS [ARTICLE]

HIS SPORTS

His sports are the most serious thing in his early life; the funnier and louder they are, the more serious. They rank with the solemnities and, If they are at all what they ought to be, their value is beyond calculation. Physically, he is adapted to sport and then devel&ped by it His growing muscles and bones and his unstable nervous system require play. He has several million neurons already and each one is jumping—all of thbm in different directions. “Can’t you keep still?” asks the impatient mother, when she ought to know from memory that he cannot. He is manufacturing energy so fast it must be taken care of, and play is the very way nature has devised for that. Play gives each muscle neuron a chance and train them all to work together. But the chief value of play is not physical; it is mental and ethical and social and emotional. It shows what is in a boy; helps to correct himi then discovers great truths and principles to him. He expresses all of himself in play. The psychical as well as physical keeks that form of expression. He expresses his emotions first in food- i getting; next in play. His whole mind gets into it. Imitation and imagination; reason and religion; love and hate; courage and comradeship—all are there. From Seven to thirteen he learns to co-ordinate motion and emotion. .He learns law, not alone the laws of the game, but the great law of cause and effect He learns, perforce, to respect the rights of others. Team work establishes social fellowship. He learns to accept defeat cheerfully and get ready for the' .next opportunity. Defeats are turned into achievements and obstacles into opportunities, by such a spirt The skill which the tgame requires, he always acquires, training all his powers to nelp each other, like soldiers in a well-drilled army. lure, then, are three great qualities disciplined by his sposts — fairness, pluck and skill. Into the gaining of them go self-control, especially the control of the temper, defiance of temptation, the altruistic sentiments of comradeship, self-confi-dence and obedience. As a baby, bis play developed his muscles; next, his skill; then from twelve on, it trained the will power and the social sentiments. Nature bA " graded the school just right. As the spirit of comradeship rises in him, he enjoys his fellow players as well as the play itself, sometimes more.

Both' play and talk are natural and pleasing to him, while work and conversation are artificial and irksome. Both have to be acquired and sometimes he never succ&ds in completely mastering them. But be learns them both easily, and eagerly when they can be put into the form of play. Most boyhood tasks can be dramatized. Trimming the lawn or cutting wood or carrying in coal can be made competitive and thereby playful. History can be dramatized, especially where it involves-war and-heroic adventure. Impersonating Indians or any* other of the attractive characters is always a pleasure to him. Apparently he is learning mostly -how to wrangle and yell and charge his opponents with being unfair, and is cultivating a narrow class spirit as fast as possible. But something very encouraging is going on. He is learning loyalty, not to himself alone, but to his cause, and each year his cause is growing till, by and by, he will identify himself with the cause of man as such, and he will be loyak Obedience to the laws of the game is embryo obedience, to laws of the state and the lawd of life. It is even claimed that the aesthetic and artistic sense, is developed in play. Play is constructive unless it is brutal. Progress is sometimes an anticlimax —quarterback, halfback, fullback, hnpchbaCk, the latter for life. But grace and rhythm of motion, balance and proportion of schemes, courtesy and kindness in N team work —these can grow out of well-played games. In these games, constructed for the times, he is growing out of the crudb into the arts of civilization. There is peculiar power in each boy to adopt a hobby and thus prepare himself, through the combination of work and play, for his own proper vocation. From fiddling to photography, from gardening to farming, from dramatic reading to writing stories, from raising pups and rabbits to running cafle and sheep ranches —such is often the couyse. To his parents or guardians, greeting; 1. Cooperate with nature in letting him play all he can. s--2. Give the play Instinct expression in sports, that develop cleanness, comradeship, courage and conscience. 3. Turn 4he play into service, by turning service into play. 4. Find his special aptitudes and let them follow that line toward his vocation ;