Abandoning their jackets, they abandon at the same
time boyish games, and display an anxiety--often a ludicrous
anxiety--to avoid whatever is not manly. If now, on arriving at the
due age, this feeling of masculine dignity puts so efficient a
restraint on the sports of boyhood, will not the feeling of
feminine modesty, gradually strengthening as maturity is
approached, put an efficient restraint on the like sports of
girlhood? Have not women even a greater regard for appearances than
men? and will there not consequently arise in them even a stronger
check to whatever is rough or boisterous? How absurd is the
supposition that the womanly instincts would not assert themselves
but for the rigorous discipline of schoolmistresses!
"In this, as in other cases, to remedy the evils of one
artificiality, another artificiality has been introduced. The
natural, spontaneous exercise having been forbidden, and the bad
consequences of no exercise having become conspicuous, there has
been adopted a system of factitious exercise--gymnastics. That this
is better than nothing we admit, but that it is an adequate
substitute for play we deny."
The pendulum has indeed swung across from those days to these of the
hockey-girl, not to mention the girl who throws a cricket-ball and bowls
very creditably overhand.
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