"FRINGES AND SAUCES"

"Take heed to avoid all those Games and Sports that are apt to take up much of thy time, or engage thy affections. He that spends all his life in Sports, is like one who wears nothing but fringes, and eats nothing but sauces." Such was Thomas Fuller's comment, a little less than three hundred years ago.

Today, compulsory athletics for Freshmen has proved its worth. It has forced some unwilling men to exercise; it has aided others who wanted to participate, but somehow or other never got around to it, until ordered. It has uncovered varsity timber in many instances; a pole-vaulter who may never before have held even a broom-stick in his hand, or a sprinter who never knew how his chasing after fire-engines in his youth had helped him for college. Compulsory Freshman athletics Las proved so beneficial that some regret that its scope is not broader; that Sophomores, as at other colleges, if not all undergraduates, are not compelled to take part. We again refer to the lethargic few who like to exercise but who have not the necessary energy to take the plunge without prodding.

However, compulsory athletics, even as applied only to Freshmen, has magnified unwittingly one tendency, the tendency to overdo. It may be difficult to get a man to eat his first olive, but once his, taste is excited, it is as equally difficult to make him eat them in moderation. Only this fall one college has been forced to declare thirteen Freshmen and three upperclassmen ineligible for its football team, largely because of studies. It is still possible to take a leaf from Thomas Fuller's philosophy of three hundred years ago, and be wary of "wearing nothing but fringes and eating nothing but sauces."