scholastic performance or success or triumph whatever?

Echo undoubtedly answers No; and she asks, also, whether in such a
competition, when the appeal is to youth, eager, strong, combative, full of
physical impulse and prowess, in the time of romantic enjoyment and heroic
susceptibility, study is not heavily handicapped, and books at a sorry
disadvantage with boats. This is what Echo distinctly inquiries; and what
answer shall be made to Echo? Who is the real hero to young Slingsby, who
has just fitted himself to enter college--the victor in the boat-race or
the noblest scholar of them all? The answer seems to be given unconsciously
in the statement that the number of students applying for entrance is
notably larger when the college has scored an athletic victory. But this
answer is not wholly satisfactory. There may be an observable coincidence,
but young men usually prepare themselves to enter a particular college, and
do not await the result of boat-races.

But the fact remains that the true college hero of to-day is the victor in
games and sports, not in studies; and it is not unnatural that it should
be so. It is partly a reaction of feeling against the old notion that a
scholar is an invalid, and that a boy must be down in his muscle because he
is up in his mathematics. But, as Lincoln said in his debate with Douglas,
it does not follow, because I think that innocent men should have equal
rights, that I wish my daughter to marry a negro. It does not follow,
because the sound mind should be lodged in a sound body, that the care of
the body should become the main, and virtually the exclusive, interest.

Yet that this is now somewhat the prevailing tendency of average feeling is
undeniable, and it is a tendency to be considered by intelligent collegians
themselves. For the true academic prizes are spiritual, not material; and
the heroes for college emulation are not the gladiators, but the sages