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

their pleasure on the occasion, I feel quite sure the California girls will be very glad to consider their wishes. Or perhaps, if this matter of the director is looked on as a concession to the enjoyment of the California team, it might be balanced against the large advantage the Stanford team gets on the financial side, since the girls at the populous end of the line have undertaken the disposition of six times the number of tickets, though the receipts will be divided equally. This arrangement the young girls accepted very cheerfully, feeling that it was but a proper courtesy in consideration of the different location of the universities; and I can hardly think the Stanford girls would decline to take into account the different relation to the directors made by the teaching arrangements in the two universities, if they thought

of it in that light, -- unless there could be any possible disadvantage or disagreeableness to them in Mr Magee's presence, of which I do not know. At all events, you will know what the conditions really are, and my letter is a piece of entirely unauthorized meddling, on my own responsibility, inspired a good deal by the sight of the girls' grieved faces.

I was rather pleased that they are going to play, and disposed to think it would be a good thing to have it grow into a custom. I can see that there are two sides to questions of intercollegiate contests, and I was impressed by some things Prof. Stillman told me yesterday of the bitterness he had seen between Harvard & Yale: but I think the California girls are in danger of getting too prim and proper

and I hope the games would shake them up some. Also, I expect to see them get beaten for they do not begin to have the facilities in the way of buildings & hours for exercise your girls have, and perhaps that will help a little the campaign for better facilities for them. I have been glad to have them have a man as instructor, too, so long as it was a man who managed the relation so nicely, --with so much freedom from prudery, yet so much delicacy. I have been much interested in watching it since I have been taking work in the gymnasium. --(I think myself it would have been better for the girls to have arranged to have carefully chosen men as umpire & referee in the game, --there are some things men do better than we, & I think they have as a sex a kind of calm confidence in their own judgment that fits them for such positions; but of course the girls will fix all such things to suit

themselves.)

I shall hope to fall in with you at the game, which I intend to make a point of attending; but you will very likely be occupied with the girls, and it is not easy to manage to meet any one person in the audience. If not then, sometime soon, I hope; for I remember very pleasantly our brief acquaintance, and the interesting things you were doing. Perhaps you heard that I was in the East last winter, visiting college women mainly: I heard you spoken of very cordially several times by Wellesley women; I tried to impress names on my mind, and remember to quote friends by name to their Californian friends, --but I met hundreds, and almost every one had some friend in California to

inquire about, & send remembrances to; and I got them hopelessly mixed.

Very cordially yours,

Milicent W. Shinn