n't want to have my boy wearing his hair like a
Comanche Indian, and coming home with broken ribs and dislocated limbs."

"We'll let the broken ribs of 1904 and the wig of the same period
suffice for the evils of that year," retorted Jarley. "It's the present
I'm looking after, not the future ten or twelve years removed. If Jack
hasn't that football to-morrow he'll have me, and I've no desire in the
present condition of my physical well-being to be used by him as a
plaything. Deprived of the leathern ball, he might use me as a football
instead, and I must rest. That's all there is about it. Besides, if he
becomes an aspirant for football honors now it will be a good thing for
him. He'll take care of himself and try to improve his physique if he
once gets the notion in his head that he wants to go on a university
eleven. I want my boy to learn to be a man, and the football ambition is
likely to be a very useful aid in that direction. He knits reins very
well with a spool and a pin now, and I think it's time he graduated in
that art, unless the woman of the future, of whom we hear so much, is to
take man's place to such an extent that the man will have to take up
woman's work. If I thought the masculine tendency of our present-day
girls was likely to go much further, I might consent to the effemination
of Jack simply to secure his comfort as a married man of the future; but
I don't think that, and in consequence Jack is going to be brought up as
a boy, and not as a girl. The football goes."

This remark was another indication of Jarley's depression. He rarely
combated Mrs. Jarley's ideas, and when he did, and with a certain air of
irritation, it was invariably a sign of his low mental state.

"When you say that the football goes, do you mean that it stays?"
queried Mrs. Jarley, who was a little tired herself, and could not,
therefore, resist the temptation to indulge in a bit of innocent
repartee.

"I do," said Jarley, shortly. "Goes is sometimes a synonym for stays.
When I feel stronger I may invent a new language, which will have fewer
absurdities than English as she is spoke."

And with this Jarley went to bed, and slept the sleep of the just man
who is truly weary.

If he had foreseen the result of his football investment it is doubtful
if his sleep would have been so tranquil--unless, perchance, he were
fashioned after that rare pattern of mankind, Louis XVI. of France, who
called for his six or seven course di