om all quarters. Most of the towns in Scotland supplied their
quota to swell the multitude, and as railway travelling was cheap and
convenient now compared to the original football days of the Queen's
Park, Clydesdale, Vale of Leven, Rangers, Dumbarton, Granville, 3rd
Lanark Volunteers, Partick, Clyde, Alexandra Athletic (of which poor
Duncan was hon. secy.), and a host of other clubs, a two-hundred-mile
journey, which was easily accomplished in an hour, was considered next
to nothing. They were there--young men and maidens from London,
Manchester, Liverpool, Edinburgh, Blackburn, Darwen, Bolton, and
Sheffield--all bent on making a day of it. The road to Bruce Park,
indeed, was a sight to see, despite the fact that the Cathcart Railway
carried its thousands that afternoon to the south-side. There were not a
few buxom country girls in the crowd, enticed thither by no great love
of the game--which, of course, they did not understand--but by their
sweethearts, just to let the young persons of the place see that they
had lads as well as their neighbours. There was one winsome lassie among
them, however, who would have done credit to Burns' incomparable 'Queen
o' the Glen.'

"Emma was the only sister of a young farmer in the district. It is a
mistaken notion to suppose that farmers in Scotland are by far too
plodding a class to indulge themselves in anything savouring of English
games and pastimes, particularly football, but this is a mistake. I know
several farmers in the country who love the dribbling game dearly, and
do their best to promote its interests in the way of supplying ground to
not a few young clubs dotted over the country. In fact, Emma was the
beauty of the whole parish, and all the young men for miles around were
well aware of it. No one could deny it, and even the most unreasonable
of fellows, Charley M'Gowan, the schoolmaster, and Alfred Walker, the
lawyer's clerk, were forced to acknowledge it.

"'Talk about Sydney's heavenly Geraldine,' said young M'Gowan to me one
afternoon on the road to practice, 'she beats her hollow.' M'Gowan,
however, was a bit of a cynic, and Emma soon cast him off for Walker. He
was a fine singer, and in after years, when he became a confirmed
bachelor, delighted to sing songs about the inconstancy of the fair sex.
He used to hum out Goethe's 'Vanatos,' and more particularly that
verse with reference to the fickle fair ones, which ran

"'I set my heart upon woman next--