ides, surveying him
with the air of one who knows something about horses, and he now asked:

"Has the creature a pedigree, old man?"

"Sure," nodded Frank. "Its pedigree is all right. I have it somewhere,
but I don't care so much for that."

"Oh, I don't know! It may prove of value to you some day."

"How?"

"Well, you may take a fancy to enter Nemo in a race or two."

"What then?"

"If he should win, you'll want his pedigree."

"I suppose that is right, but I am no sportsman of the turf; that is
professional. Amateur sports are good enough for me."

"Honest horse racing is one of the grandest sports in the world!" cried
Jack, with flashing eyes.

"Honest horse racing!" laughed Griswold. "What's that? Where do you find
anything like that?"

"Oh, there is such a thing."

"There may be, but people are not used to it."

"That's why I do not think much of horse racing," declared Frank.
"There are too many tricks to it to suit me."

"Oh, there are tricks to any sort of sport."

"Very few to college sports. If a man is caught at anything crooked it
means ruin for his college career, and he is sure to carry the stigma
through life. I tell you college sports are honest, and that is why they
are so favored by people of taste and refinement--people who care little
or nothing for professional sports. The public sees the earnestness, the
honesty, and the manhood in college sports and contests, and the patrons
of such sports know they are not being done out of their money by a
fake. Prize fighting in itself is not so bad, but the class of men who
follow it have brought disgrace and disrepute upon it. Fights are
'fixed' in advance by these dishonest scoundrels, and the man who backs
his judgment with his money is likely to be done out of his coin by the
dirtiest kind of a deal."

"What makes me sore," said Diamond, "is that some sensational newspapers
should send professional bruisers to witness our college football games
and denounce them as more brutal than prize fights."

"That makes me a trifle warm under the collar," admitted Browning. "But
I don't suppose we should mind what that class of papers say. Their
motto is 'Anything for a sensation,' and the intelligent portion of the
newspaper readers is onto them. These papers have faked so many things
that they carry no weight when they do tell the truth."

"I wouldn't mind putting Nemo into a race just to see what sort of stuff
there is in him," admitted Fran