Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 219, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 September 1911 — HIS SPORTS [ARTICLE]

HIS SPORTS

Hia 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 developed 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 them in different directions. “Can’t you keep $till?" 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 muscle and 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 bim| then discovers great truths, and principles to him. He expresses all of himself In play. The psychical as 'well' as physical freeks that form of expression. He expresses his emotions first in foodgetting; 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 gaiye requires he always acquires, training all his powers to help each other, like soldiers in a well-drilled army. Here, then, are three great qualities disciplined by his sports — 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, his play developed his muscles; next, his skill; then from twelve on. It trained the will power and the social Sentiments. Nature has 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 succeeds in completely mastering them. But he learns them both easily and eagerly when they can be put into the form of play. Most boyhood tasks can be dramatized. Triipming 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 withubeing 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 1b growing larger;'till, by and by, he will identify himself with the cause of man as such, and he will be loyal. Obedience to the laws of the game is embryo obedience to the laws of the state and the laws 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, hunchback, the latter for life. But grace and rhythm of motion, balance and proportion of schemes, courtesy and kindness in team work —these can grow out *of well-played games. In these games, constructed for the times, he is growing out of the crude illto 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 cattle and sheep ranches—such Is often the course. To his parents or guardians, greeting: A- Co-operate with nature in letting him play all he can. 2. Give the play instinct expression in sports, that develop cleanness, comradeship, courage and- conscience. 3. Turn the play Into service, by turning service Into play. 4. Find his special aptitudes and let them follow that line toward his vocation. i —--