If this, then, be "womanliness," can athletic games injure it? Do they
spoil woman's usefulness as a woman? Do they damage her specific
excellence? Do they tend to give her less endurance and nerve at
critical times? I do not think so. Certainly lawn tennis does not. It is
undoubtedly a strenuous game. There is more energy of physical frame,
more brain-tax and will-discipline demanded in one hardly contested
match than would suffice for a whole day's devotion to many other games.
These requirements must help a woman, and in the possession of the
qualities that games bestow athletic girls have a great pull over their
sisters. If you are skilled and well drilled in discipline and
sportsmanship, you are bound to benefit in the strife of the world. You
are the better able to face disappointments and sorrows. For what do
these strenuous games mean? Exercise in the open air, and exercise of a
thorough and engrossing character, carried out with cheerful and
stimulating surroundings, with scientific methods, rational aims, and
absorbing chances. Surely that is the foundation of health culture.

The truth is, games have done for women what the dervish's subtle
prescription did for the sick sultan. You perhaps remember the story.
The sultan, having very bad health from over-feeding, sedentary habits,
and luxurious ease, consulted the clever dervish. The dervish knew that
it would be useless to recommend the sultan simply to take exercise. He
therefore said to him, "Here is a ball, which I have stuffed with
certain rare and costly medicinal herbs, and here is a bat, the handle
of which I have also stuffed with similar herbs. Your highness must take
this bat and with it beat about this ball until you perspire freely. You
must do this every day." His highness acquiesced, and in a short time
the exercise of playing bat and ball with the dervish greatly improved
his health, and by degrees cured him of his ailment. Now, the tennis
ball, to my mind, is stuffed with medicinal herbs which impart vigour