mount of labour, to say nothing of
self-denial, is needed to make a crack back, half-back, or skilful
forward. Sometimes one has to be contented with a place in the Second
Eleven for years, before some incident, it may be, brings him to the
front, and reveals true merit. In football, of course, as in other
things, I have found that the best men were not always in their best
places, and when this was the case, what is known as favouritism came in
bold relief, but in the end the club in which such stupidity was rampant
suffered very severely. It did all very well when the club were engaged
in ordinary contests with weaker opponents, but it came out in some of
the big events, in which the guilty club predominated in the selection
of men to represent a city, a university, and even a country.
Fortunately, however, I can honestly say that during the last few years
there has been little of this practised, and Scotch football under both
rules is all the better in consequence.

While every enlightened mind is willing to go a long way in advocating
equality, the line must be drawn somewhere, and I am inclined to think
at that stage where gentlemanly feeling and courtesy are absent. A very
obscure individual may, by his conduct on the field, show that he at
least can be a gentleman. In all such manly sports social distinction
ought to be sunk, and that great and noble equality--that equality and
love of honest worth which is so dear to the Scotch (and let me also say
English heart) be ever remembered, when team meets team on the football
field. We are shown noble examples of how in days gone by, peer mingled
with peasant on the cricket field, strove with each other on the curling
pond, and why should not such things exist in football? Let me hope that
as each succeeding season comes round the noble winter game will in
proportion show greater improvement, both in club and individual
integrity, as well as higher scale of moral worth.

_X.--THE DUEL NEAR THE FOOTBALL FIELD, AND THE CAUSE OF IT._

"And you tell me, Frank, that the old ground is at last cut up to form a
railway embankment?" said Bob Smith to Frank Green (whose sister, by the
way, had got married to Pate Brown last season), as they met one evening
at Crosshill.

"They will be long in finding a ground like Hampden Park, I'm thinking,"
replied Green, with the recollections of pleasant games and glorious
victories for the Black-and-Whites, to say nothing of nu