There can be no question that an epoch has
been created by the freedom of the modern girl to play games, and to
enjoy the movements of a ball, as her brother does. The very fact of her
pleasure in games indicates, to those who do not believe that the body
is constructed on essentially vicious principles, that they must be good
for her. The mere exercise is the least of the good they do. The open
air counts for more, as does the development of skill, and the girl's
opportunity of sharing in that moral education which all good games
involve and which there is no need to insist upon here. Amongst the many
things alleged against woman as natural defects by those who have never
for a moment troubled to distinguish between nature and nurture, are an
incapacity to combine with her sisters, petty dishonour in small things,
a blindness to the meaning of "playing the game." It is similarly
alleged by such persons against the lower classes that they also do not
know how to "play the game," and do not understand the spirit of true
sportsmanship, preferring to win anyhow rather than not at all. But
those who conduct the Children's Vacation Schools in London--that
remarkable arrangement by which children are damaged in school time and
educated in holidays--are aware that in a short time children of any
class can be taught to "play the game," if only they can be made to see
it from that point of view.
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