I was on my feet at once, though it was some moments before I could speak over the cheers from the gallery. The proposed site of this “gymnasium,” I informed my audience, was none other than the college’s beloved Strout Park, a particularly serene bit of landscape nestled among the severe granite hills. Was such a precious natural resource to be squandered in the pursuit of an enterprise that ought best to be performed in private and certainly not under the auspices of the college? To then endow, I asserted, this endeavor with all the hallowed privileges of, say, the faculty of Literature and Rhetoric was obscene. There was a faint titter of laughter, which I tried to ignore, despite the fact that I feared that my cause was lost (the simple geometry of the audience could tell me that).
Nevertheless, I persevered. Was it truly the charge of the college, I asked, to take over the physical education of a man? Was this not more properly a task suited to the military, which depended on a man’s fitness, or to the physician, whose job it was to preserve the health of any individual? Did the college really think it could dictate health and then, piling absurdity upon absurdity, grant a degree for it? Were the precious financial resources of the college to be spent on a facility in which young men might run around with balls, or were they not better apportioned to the improvement of the library, which sorely needed more books, or to the erection of an observatory, so that our understanding of the heavens might increase?
“Surely men are entitled to the pursuit of physical health,” I argued, softening my tone a bit, as is necessary in any rhetorical argument. “Surely anyone who actually enjoys throwing a ball around a field can find like-minded fellows with whom to do this in his spare time. This is the essence of recreation, by definition an adjunct to education, not its point.”
“Hear, hear,” someone from my side called out.
“Nonsense,” shouted someone from the other side.
President Phillips had to ask for order. William Bliss was seated to my right (in the pro-gymnasium two-thirds), and I dared not look at him lest I be derailed completely.
“But to make such an activity compulsory,” I said, “is beyond reason. One cannot dictate physical health any more than one can dictate good teeth or good breeding. The college is in danger of straying into an arena in which it has no place and, further, of risking becoming a laughingstock. Do we really imagine that sober parents will send us their children? Will they not want more for their one hundred and fifty-five dollars a year than this misplaced commitment to harden their sons’ bodies?”
The shouts and calls had reached a level uncomfortable enough that I was forced to raise my voice above the fray.
“Of what possible use will a degree in physical culture be?” I asked, nearly shouting now. “Are we not in danger of releasing into the world students with no skills beyond what might be useful in the military? The business of a university …” I said, and then stopped.
“The business of a university …” I tried.
I could not finish my sentence. An odd and unpleasant sensation had taken hold of my eyes so that the audience before me had broken into a hundred — no, a thousand — brightly moving dots.
“The business of a university …” I began again, but I could not think how I had intended for the sentence to end. My mouth opened and closed, and I am sure I must have winced, for I was certainly wincing inwardly from extraordinary pain. I felt light-headed and gripped the podium. It was then that I found myself most grievously indisposed in a manner I should not like to set forth in any detail here. After a time, I felt a hand on my arm and looked up into the face of Arthur Hallock, who, as a physician, undoubtedly felt it necessary (and politically expedient) to see to my distress. I shook him off, humiliated by his attentions. “Go away,” I think I actually said as I fainted to the floor.
I awoke moments later on the stage of the amphitheater. I could hear Hallock telling Phillips that he thought I had had a seizure, and though I wanted to protest this misdiagnosis, I found that I could not; that, for the moment, I had no speech. In a state of confusion and deep chagrin, I was brought to a sitting position and then to my feet. When it was determined I could stand on my own — even though, mysteriously, I still could not talk — I was led like a child to my rooms.
Though I regained my speech before the night was out, I was too exhausted to move or to eat — my collapse, I am convinced now, more emotional than physical. I tried diligently to convince my would-be physician of this, but I could tell that he was no more persuaded by my argument than he had been by my impassioned rhetoric in the amphitheater.