ld's
play compared with what it was a thousand years ago."

"What!" cried Dick. "Is the game as old as that?"

"Much older," was the reply. "The Greeks and Romans played it two or
three thousand years ago. But I was referring especially to the
beginning of the game in England. In the tenth century, they commenced
by using human skulls as footballs."

"What!" exclaimed the boys in chorus.

"It's a fact beyond all question," reaffirmed the Professor. "In the
year 962, when the Danes were invading England, a resident of Chester
captured a Dane, cut off his head and kicked it around the streets. The
gentle populace of that time took a huge liking to the game and the idea
spread like wildfire. You see, it didn't cost much to run a football
team in those days. Whenever they ran short of material, they could go
out and kill a Dane, and there were always plenty swarming about."

"Those good old days of yore," quoted Dick.

"Plenty of bonehead plays in those days as well as now," murmured Tom.

"Of course," resumed the Professor, "that sort of thing couldn't go on
forever. The Danes withdrew, and naturally no Englishman was sport
enough to offer his own head for the good of the game. So they
substituted a leather ball. But the game itself was about as rough as
ever. It was usually played in the streets, and very often, when some
dispute arose about the rules, it developed into a battle royal, and the
players chased each other all over the town with ready fists and readier
clubs. Heads were broken and lives lost, and the King issued an edict
forbidding the game. But under other rulers it was resumed, though in a
somewhat milder form, and has continued up to the present.

"No longer ago than yesterday," he added, taking out his memorandum
book, "I ran across a criticism of the game, by an Englishman named
Stubbs, way back in 1583. He goes for it right and left, so bitterly and
yet so quaintly, that I thought it worth while preserving, old-fashioned
spelling and all. Here's the way it goes:

"'As concerning footballe, I protest unto you it may rather be called a
friendlie kind of a fight than a play or recreation, a bloody and
murthering practice than a felowy sort of pastime. For doth not every
one lie in wait for his adversary, seeking to overthrow him and kicke
him on the nose, though it be on hard stones or ditch or dale, or valley
or hill, so he has him down, and he that can serve the most of this
fashion is counted