Milicent W. Shinn to Mosher, 1896-03-24

Niles, March 24, '96

My dear Miss Mosher:- I am going to ask you a favor, and one that is meddling with what is none of my business. I will trust to your tact and good temper to preserve me from the usual consequences that befall the meddler.

I have been keeping up a little exercise in the gymnasium at Berkeley (I find I have to fight off middle age and stoutness nowadays), and seeing me about so much, the girls there get to forgetting that I am an elder & an outsider, and talking of their interests before me pretty freely Today when I went in for my exercise, I found the young girls very much grieved and

disappointed about a matter connected with their proposed basket-ball game with your girls. As it was a thing that could have nothing to do with the game, one way or another, --with affecting its results, I mean, or any question of the least consequence, that I can see, aside from the pleasure and mutual good will of the girls, it did seem to me as if I might venture, without authorization from anybody, or the knowledge of the persons most concerned, to do a bit of tale-bearing to you.

It seems that after the two sides had agreed (according to the preference of both, as I understand?) to play before an audience of ladies only, the California girls asked

not to have this construed as excluding from the audience the gymnasium directors, concerning whose presence the most prudish San Francisco society lady, or most sensational reporter, could not possibly conceive an objection. The relation of the California girls to their director, who has been till this year their constant and only instructor, is very warm; and they owe to his assiduous efforts, his sacrifices of time, & strength and comfort, their only chances for physical exercise here. No one else in the faculty has looked out for them at all about it, and I think all college women owe him a real debt of gratitude for the firmness, personal trouble, and high-minded considerateness with which he has stood by the principle of physical education for girls. (The older collegiate alumnae know about it, -- they called on him as an ally, and he responded bravely, and really won over the secondary

schools, and affected S. F. sentiment greatly.) You know how girls feel about a teacher they are grateful to, and attached to, --how we felt when we were girls, -- as if the fun of the occasion was spoiled if he or she was not there to look on. I suppose they did not realized that to the Stanford girls you & Miss March take the place Mr. Magee has had with them, so that Dr. Wood's presence would not be the same sort of pleasure to the Stanford team that Mr Magee's is to them: so it was quite a grievous disappointment when they received word that their request was refused; and it seemed to me a pity that any requests between the teams that conceive purely the courtesies and pleasantness of the game, and not the contest itself in any way, should be refused;

or that to eityher team the game should be in any wise spoiled as a lark, and reduced more to a contest pure & simple. It seemed to me as if there must have been some misunderstanding on the part of the Stanford girls in making their refusal.

You will know, being on the ground, what their reasons were, and how far they are fixed, or whether it is best even to ask them if on second thoughts it does not seem best to them to reconsider. If they have on their part any little courtesy to ask, or if you know of anything (outside the arrangements of the game itself, concerning which, of course, an ignorant outsider like myself would not dare to ventyure a meddling word) that would go to enhance