INSIDE THE NEW GYMNASIUM
Are Dartmouth undergraduates justifying the expenditure of time, money, and effort which has been made on the new gymnasium? The easiest way to answer this question is to step inside this new gymnasium on any afternoon and see what is going on. Down on the first floor we find the track field and baseball cage. On the track field there are carefully laid out paths, and squares, and circles for broad jump, high jump, pole-vault, shot-put, and all the other field events; also there is the much improved cinder track, 6 2-3 laps to the mile. As we stop here for a minute on our tour of investigation, we see Whitney putting the shot regularly 46 feet and more, getting into form for his coming meets, including the Stockholm meet in July, where he hopes to represent this country and incidentally Dartmouth. While we are watching him, Mark Wright sails across our vision with a pole in his hands, and in a second or so he is soaring over a bar twelve feet high or more, for he has recently broken the college record. "Jake" Enright flashes over the high jump bar at six feet as if he were on wings. While we are watching these events, Harry Hillman fires a pistol and Steinert, Gardner, Dolan, and Haywood, and the others who are trying for the relay team flash into sight around the curve and out of sight again before we are quite sure that 'anything has happened. A few white streaks appear in another part of the track which later resolve themselves into some of Dartmouth's sprinters practicing starts.
In the other wing on the ground floor, Coach Woods is trying out his future Ty Cobbs, Christie Matthewsons, and Wagners. The batters are early learning to get their eye on the ball, and the pitchers are learning to perfect their banana peel curves and knuckle balls. Between the two wings, we find unexpectedly three handball courts. One of these the tennis enthusiasts have captured and are using to practice strokes, though something seems to be lacking without the familiar form of Fred Harris.
We pass through the locker room, which is ample enough to supply the needs of hundreds of fellows at the same time. Upstairs we find, on the first floor, offices, dressing rooms, doctor's rooms, an embryo trophy hall, and a board track. Still farther up, on the top floor, we find several hundred freshmen going through their required exercises under the direction of Doctor Bowler, and getting more or less good from them according to the spirit with which they enter into the exercise. Besides these compulsory gymnasts, many others are voluntarily swinging the dumbbells, going over the ladder, the hanging rings, parallel bars, and countless other contrivances invented to give variety and pleasure to healthful exercise. During these melting weeks, when slush prevents any outdoor exercise, the gymnasium is in particular demand.
We have only had time to glance hastily at the workings of this wonderful new gym which is doing so much to develop physical, mental, and moral manhood for Dartmouth undergraduates. However, our tour of inspection, short as it has been, has left with us an unqualified answer to the question with which we entered, and that answer is: YES.
