Professor Wilder Gets Hit

It is superfluous to remark that the season is well under way when the game of foot ball is attacked all over the country by those who know least about what they are talking. The wildest aud most absurd objection comes from a source whence an attack would least be expected - from Prof. Wilder, of Cornell, a gentleman, supposedly, . whose intellectuality should lead him to more rational conclusious than he has reached in the present case. Prof. Wilder rose in his indignation and proposed that Cornell abandon inter-collegiate athletics. (Just after the Michigan game, of course.) His proposal came down with a dull thud, and Cornell sat down on it so hard that it is doubtful if the professor will ever recognize his scheme. It is right. The biggest cranks are outside of athletic circles, not inside. Prof. Wilder has seen evil in foot ball ; ergo, he would abolish inter-collegiate athletics. Absurd ! This is logic run wild. It is well i'or Mr. Wilder that the management of Cornell does not reason like that. If they did, their syllogisins would run like this. "All men are evil. Professor Wilder isa man. j fore, Prof. Wilder is evil. All evil ! should be avoided. Prof. Wilder is evil. Therefore, Prof. AVilder should be avoided. Fire him !" There is too mach of good in university athletics and inter-collegiate athletics to be thrown away simply for the sake of being rid of a small element of evil. This Prof. Wilder, as a reasoning I man, ought to know. Doubtless, the professor's eyes will stick straight out when he sees what Casper W. Whitney says about hini in the current number of Harper's Weekly. This is Mr. Whitney's opinión : "Professor Wilder represents that type of men who are in the minority - thank j goodness for American manhood - who never had a vigorous, romping, wholesome boyhood, whom the hardy sports of their corapanions fllled with terror, and for whom squat-tag and mumbletho-peg were athletic orgies. These are the men, whose livers would work more ïealthfully probably for a good, thorough sliaking up, who fiud no good in sport. If Cornell should by any chance, spread such a resolution on her records, ;he only result would be that Cornell would drop back to the condition which obtained in our universities fifteen or twenty years ago. Hazing and dissipations would be rene wed, and athletics eventually once again taken up." There ! Mr. Wilder put that in your pipe and smoke it, and go back to your closet and your books and let American youth have a chance to develop into manlike men, not into effemiuate simpletons and cranks.