viously divided the East and the West. It has afforded to the centre and West commercial facilities that were absolutely necessary for material and social development. During the war it was of the greatest advantage. It was built without costing the people of the state anything in the way of taxes; and for forty years it has yielded the state some revenue without any expenditure by the people. The state owes about $2,750,000.00 of bonds for its stock; and its stock can be sold at present quotations for $5,250,000.00."

In 1861 Governor Morehead was selected with Chief Justice Ruffin, ex-Governor Reid, Honorable George Davis, and Honorable Daniel M. Barringer to represent North Carolina in the famous Peace Convention which met in Washington on February 4 of that year to devise some compromise by which collision between North and South might be averted. Governor Morehead had always been a strong Union man, but he returned from the Peace Convention fully convinced that secession was unavoidable. He became a member of the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States and devoted his means and energies unstintedly to the Confederate

cause.

The close of the war found him reduced in fortune* and broken in health. One year later, August 27, 1866, he died peacefully and resignedly at the Rockbridge Alum Springs in Virginia. He retained his mental faculties to the last and only a few days before his death discussed the industrial needs of the South so ably that a friend exclaimed, on leaving the room: "Is it possible he can be in a dying condition! He has laid out fifty years' work for us in this conversation alone."

At his death, which preceded that of his wife only one year, Governor Morehead left the following family, of which only Mrs. L. H. Walker and Major J. Turner Morehead survive: Mrs. L. H. Walker, Mrs. Waightstill Avery, Mrs. Colonel Peter Evans, Mrs. R. L. Patterson, Mrs. Julius A.

*Governor Morehead's estate, however, was less involved than that of many others because he owned comparatively few slaves. His wife had been reared near the New Garden Church, which was abolitionist in sentiment, and had always opposed her husband's investing largely in slaves. (Letter from Mrs. L. H. Walker).

Gray, John L. Morehead, Major J. Turner Morehead, and Eugene L. Morehead.

Governor Morehead's life spanned a period of the nineteenth century marked by unparalleled economic change and industrial enterprise. Between the years 1830 and 1845 railroads were first built, telegraph lines were first stretched, and the ocean was crossed for the first time by steam propelled vessels. He was in a sense the child of his age, for he felt the thrill of the new life and saw clearly the promise of material and commercial greatness that the new forces prophesied. But never for a moment did he lose sight of those finer virtues without which material progress becomes gross and sordid. In his character there was the blend of gentleness and strength, of generosity and business sagacity, of social charm and rugged principle. Wealth was to him the means of doing good, and high station the opportunity of public service. Though he was the pioneer manufacturer in the South, he transmits to this age not merely the lesson of industrial enterprise and material progress but of these wrought into the finer forces of character and used only for high social and civic ends.

The Excessive Devotion to Athletics

WILLIAM P. FEW,

Dean and Professor of English in Trinity College

And

The recent revelations to the public of the exaggerated emphasis put upon intercollegiate athletics and the rank abuses that have in late years grown up about the whole system, have produced a shock almost as severe as the shock produced by the disclosures of public and private graft. between these evils and dangers in college sports and the evils and dangers in the business. world there is an unmistakable connection; for the excess that manifests itself in college sports is but a reflection of the same spirit that is everywhere abroad in our country. The intensity with which college sports are pursued is a manifestation of the spirit which the American people put into everything; and the craze for winning games embodies the spirit and methods of trade. The impulses and habits acquired at home are carried into the schools and colleges. But to account for the rise of evils is not to justify them; and for some of the evils that have grown up about competitive athletics there is no justification.

Thoughtful men have, for some years, felt that college authorities ought to call a halt, and set some limit to the allcontrolling place athletics have come to hold in American colleges. The American public has lately been in a fair way to hysteria on the subject. What the sober thought of the more reasonable could not achieve seems about to come at the hands of the many, in the great mass and brute force of enraged public sentiment. To lop off some of the grosser evils of college athletics will be worth the cost to the American people of a genuine case of national hysterics. This swift passing from one extreme to another is our characteristic American way of making progress. To come to a just and durable judgment it is necessary to strike a balance. That there are evils in intercollegiate athletics is beyond question. The disclosures recently made show the conditions in some of the prominent eastern colleges to be worse than had been known

to the general public. Football, as the most exaggerated form of intercollegiate games, is being widely condemned. As at present played, the game should no doubt be abolished. The entire country has been laid under obligations to Columbia University for its announced determination to banish the game; and Harvard never did the country a better service than it is now doing by the investigations it is making and the action it will no doubt take in due time. The present game should be killed and some better autumn game allowed to come in its place; may be, Association or Rugby football, in which a larger number of men could take part, and with less risk to life and limb.

There is good in intercollegiate athletics, when properly conducted. They have made considerable contribution to American college life, and deserve to be saved from the perils that threaten them and the evils that now actually beset them. The two chief dangers of intercollegiate athletics are, excess and the spirit that would win by unfair means. It may be fairly said that these are the two most prominent dangers in American life. The faults which everybody recognizes as belonging to intercollegiate games are, therefore, not to be charged to any inherent weakness in the system, but are to be taken as manifestations of American life. While, then, these faults must not be regarded as inherent weaknesses inevitably attaching themselves to college sports; yet these faults must be overcome, else they will make college sports more harmful than useful and will in the end destroy them altogether. The situation has grown more intense year by year, and continually the athletic is being substituted for the intellectual ideal. That this excessive importance attached to athletics is doing harm to American education cannot be questioned. And these evils are more pronounced in the larger and older colleges of the East and North. They are evils that have grown out of mere bigness. They have come from great prosperity, like many of the evils in the business and political life of the country. These larger colleges must do something to lighten the strain that is now upon athletics; and something will doubtless be done before long. Perhaps to abolish the gate receipts would produce the desired results.

Our

These pronounced evils of athletics in the larger eastern colleges have not threatened the colleges in the South. evils are not evils of prosperity, but evils of adversity; and they came from lack of organization, from the chaotic state in which so much of our education finds itself. The country has been too poor, the colleges have been too small, and the communities in which the colleges have been located too sparsely settled to give Southern intercollegiate games the vast crowds and immense gate receipts that have produced the fanaticism and wild enthusiasm in the North. And yet athletic conditions have been no better in most parts of the South than in the North. But the unfortunate situation here is attributable to the disorganized state of education, and, as a symptom of this disorganization, it is most discouraging. Southern colleges are growing rapidly, and the entire section is becoming prosperous as never before. Prosperity will soon come to intercollegiate athletics; and if to the evils of disorganization, we add the evils that come from bigness and prosperity, we shall have a state of things that will be unendurable. It is absolutely essential that all reputable Southern colleges at once put themselves right in the matter of intercollegiate athletics.

What is needed is a common set of rules for all reputable colleges. These rules ought to be reasonably fair and they ought to be enforced by an intelligent and just public sentiment in the college and out of it. A college that will habitually indulge in sharp and questionable athletic practices will not develop moral power enough to correct itself, until it is sternly judged at the bar of public opinion. If professionals or semi-professionals are sent against amateurs of another institution, the conditions are unequal if the facts are known; if they are concealed it is unfair and dishonest. Nothing can be more permanently vicious and hurtful to the college than the practice-not unknown to some institutions in the North and in the South-of playing men of doubtful amateur standing and at the same time proclaiming to the world that the standing of these men is unquestionable. This instilling into the minds of the educated youth of the country the doctrine, that in order to win it is allowable to indulge in sharp tricks,