ago, there was not even a baseball team in the place--the young
fellows gathered on street corners in summer, loafing and
idling, revelling in crazy, foolish degrading stories--absolute
degenerations--now see them--on the tail of a blizzard, they dig out
their lacrosse sticks and start the game on the second fine day.
From the time the hockey is over now, until hockey time again--these
fellows talk and dream lacrosse, and a decenter, cleaner lot of lads
you won't find anywhere. Activity has saved them--activity _is_
growth, it is life--it is everything!"

The old man shook his head slowly:

"They are not saved, my dear boy--none of us are--who depend on
outward things for your happiness. Outward things change--vanish.
'As a man thinketh in his heart--so is he!'--that is the secret of
triumphant living. As a man thinketh. These fellows of yours--for I
know this lacrosse team has been one of the many ways you took of
sapping your energy--do not think. They play, run, scrap, cheer, but
there's no meditation--no turning inward of the thoughts, no mental
progress.

"It would not be natural for growing boys, alive to their fingertips,
to sit yapping like lazy collie dogs, just thinking," said the young
doctor heatedly. "They want avenues of self-expression, and in
lacrosse and hockey they find it."

"Artificial aids to happiness--every one of them--crutches for lame
souls--the Kingdom of Heaven is within you," the old doctor rambled
on, "but it is all a part of this great new country--this big west is
new and crude and distinct--only the primary colors are used in the