tially grave and plain for all Josephine's Japanese sunshade and tendency to make the most of her willowy figure. Little did we dream of the later development which, like a huge wave, was to sweep over the land of the free and the home of the brave, overwhelming its native simplicity with the virtues, tastes, and vices of the other nations against which our forefathers barred the door. Palaces in all but the name stand where the buffalo was wont to disport himself, and where the American eagle in human form once flapped his wings and screamed most viciously in contempt of the effete civilization of the older world. Sons and daughters of the pioneers who bolted their dinners on the stroke of twelve find seven too early for elegant convenience. Among the reddest and palest of hothouse roses, which deck their tables, glisten glass of Venetian pattern and china from the bankrupt stock of kings. According to their intellectualities their talk is of labor and capital, of workinggirls' clubs and model tenement-houses, of Buddha and Zola, of foreign titles, and transplanted fox-hunting. To-day a hundred thousand dollars is barely a competency, and a building less than a dozen stories high dwarfs the highway of trade. The vestibule limited, the ocean greyhound, the Atlantic cable, and the voice - bearing telephone have made all nations kin, and bid fair to amalgamate society. Even the newly created species condescends to swap her birthright for a coronet.

All this has come to pass while Josephine and I have been plodding along the route of all flesh, trying not to forget our early aspirations. We have changed our dinner-hour with the rest of the world; we have learned to talk more or less unintelligently about the sweating system and Buddhism; we have bowed our necks to the yoke of the electric wire. Now that Josephine has spurred me on to it, I have even bought a modern house, and replenished my wardrobe so as to keep pace with thought and custom. But, nevertheless, sitting here in my renovated easy-chair, with my feet stretched toward the brass andirons which were the pride of one of my great-grandmothers,

listening to the ticking of the old-fashioned clock which belonged to another of them, and conscious that the eyes of my most distinguished ancestor are looking down at me from the wall, I feel bewildered, as it were, by this latter-day metamorphosis, bristling with new and formidable problems. Whither is civilization tending? What is one to think of it all? And by the shades of my forefathers, purified by pie, how shall we best help our sons and daughters to hitch their wagons to stars? That is what is worrying Josephine and me.

By way of contradistinction to me, who am rather short and slight, my namesake and eldest son is still habitually spoken of in the family as Little Fred, notwithstanding that he is a head taller than I, and a strongly built, muscular youth into the bargain. He is in college a sophomore-and I do not hesitate to declare that when he left school he was about as clean cut a young fellow, both mentally and physically, as anyone would wish to see. I have always encouraged him to take a sensible amount of exercise and have been glad that he seemed fond of the athletic sports in vogue among the growing lads of the country and did not need to be prodded, like his brother David for instance, to keep out of doors. I have been aware that he has been a prominent member of an amateur base-ball nine and foot-ball eleven, and I have been proud to follow in a confused sort of fashion, for the technical terms have changed sadly

since I was a boy, the defeats and victories, principally the latter, I think, of those illustrious organizations. Although I was never his equal physically, I look back with considerable pride to my own foot-ball days, and my children have heard me repeatedly describe the famous dash which I once made with the ball from one end of the field to the other, with Tom Ruggs, the butcher's boy, at my heels, and how he never caught me until after I had sent it flying over the goal line, and we had won the game. That was a long time ago now, and we played a very different game, as I have since discovered. I hear a great deal said nowadays about the lack of attention which the older generation gave to manly sports. We did not make much fuss about them, I agree, and consequently some boys may have been allowed to grow to manhood without proper physical training; but it seems to me that most of us were playing something in the fresh air the greater portion of the time. However, I have always been a great believer in manly sports and I wish to continue to be.

When my boy entered college I remember telling him kindly but explicitly that it was a costly matter to send him there, and that I should expect him to make the most of the opportunities for improvement which were offered him. I knew that he was not especially clever at his books like his brother David, yet at the same time I had set him down as a sensible, wide-awake fellow with at least an average

opening for him after graduation with the firm of Leggatt & Paine, our leading bankers. I expected, of course, that he would continue to take a suitable amount of exercise, to keep himself in good trim; row on the river and not altogether renounce base-ball. Indeed, although I was aware that collegiate sports were a much more serious tax on a student's time than in my day, I should not have seriously demurred had he been selected to row on the University crew or play on the University base-ball nine. I should have greatly preferred to have him steer clear of both; still, I try to remember that I was once his age myself, and I am given to understand that the rivalry between the several colleges in these matters is more intense than ever. There was a time when nothing seemed to me of such vital interest as

whether Harvard or Yale won the boat

race. The Darwinian theory paled in comparative importance beside it. Indeed, I still take more interest in it than it deserves, perhaps. Nevertheless, I took pains to impress upon Fred that his studies were to be his first consideration.

We did not play football in college when I was there, which was the reason, perhaps, why I assumed that it was a boy's game, to be shuffled off with other purely youthful sports when one became a dignified student. I had heard here and there the statement that it was a rough game, which did not impress me very much, recalling as I did my own hacked shins. It was not until I read my

that my attention was particularly called to the matter. Horace seemed to have lashed himself into a perfect fury on the subject. He stig

matized the modern game as it was played by University students as a barbaric spectacle, dangerous to limb, if not to life. Horace has always been more or less of a pepper-pot, but he is not exactly a croaker, and he served in the war with distinction. Hence his diatribe made me frown, even though it rather amused me. It was written in the autumn of the year before Fred went to Cambridge, and I read it aloud to the family circle as being of interest to a sub-freshman.

"What perfect nonsense!" exclaimed that profound young gentleman, when I had finished. "The man who wrote that letter is a flub-dub, father."

Though not aware of the precise meaning of this epithet, I realized that it was a severe arraignment. I felt, too, that my manner of reading the communication had given license to my boy's tongue. I answered, therefore, with some unction.

"The writer, Horace Plympton, is a brave and sensible man. I know him very well."

"I guess he never kicked foot-ball." "In his day the young men who were fortunate enough to be sent to college were better occupied. Football? It is a game for high-schools, not universities."

"It is the greatest game of the day, father," said my sub-freshman, with the haughty consciousness of superior knowledge which the waning, though reigning, generation has so often to bow to.

I saw

Of course that settled the question. I believe that I made a futile remark to the effect that the president ought to put a stop to it, or something of the sort, but I knew enough to know that I had been convicted of error. Fred glance at his sisters, and all three at their mother, who looked anxious in her desire not to seem to take sides against me, though manifestly sympathizing with them. I said to myself that if foot-ball was the greatest game of the day, I was not going to put my foot down and prevent my boys from playing it merely because I was old fogy enough not to understand that it was the greatest game of the day, and Horace Plympton had written a

letter to the Evening Times. Accordingly, when the time came for Fred to go to college I merely cautioned him generally against wasting his time, and uttered no fulminations against football in particular.

"On the University foot-ball eleven?" I echoed, taking the newspaper from my wife, and as I read I felt a little lump of emotional pride rise in my throat. There it was, sure enough, in black and white, though I could not help wondering why the fact was of importance enough to be chronicled in the daily press along with the telegraphic news, and the deaths and marriages. It was evidently a matter of considerable moment, though I could not quite see why.

"He will be perfectly delighted," said Josephine. "He has been extremely doubtful whether he would be chosen. Oh, Fred," she exclaimed, in a tone of solicitude, "do you really think it's safe?"

How exactly that was like a woman. Here was my wife, who had secretly aided and abetted her son in his design, and been the recipient of his hopes and fears on the subject, turning to me, who had dared to utter a feeble protest or two only to be scoffed at, and summarily sat upon, asking if the game was really safe.

"There are certain risks in this world that a man has to take," I answered, borrowing the sentiment which she had uttered on the occasion of our affair with the burglars.

Josephine did not appreciate my irony. "Why, oh why, did you give your consent to his playing foot-ball? she asked, tragically. "I understand that it is & terribly rough and dangerous game."

"I give my consent? This is monstrous, Josephine, monstrous. I did not wish to be a killjoy and a marplot, or I would have forbidden Fred to touch a foot-ball after he entered college. Had you, my dear, given me the least bit of support, I should have nipped the whole business in the bud. Yet now you seek to throw the blame on me."

The suggestion of the dire parental sternness of which I had evidently just missed being guilty caused her thoughts to fly off on an opposite tack. "The

poor darling, his heart was so set on being chosen," she said. "I am sure, Fred, it would have been a terrible blow to him if he had not succeeded."

"I dare say that it was his chief motive in going to college," I interjected, a little indignantly.

"I really think it was," she murmured, with sweet maternal sympathy. "I shall live though in constant dread until it is over and done with."

"What is over and done with?"

"The Harvard - Yale football match. It's on account of that he's been so anxious to belong. And, Fred, he said to me the other day that if he was chosen, he hoped that we would go to Springfield to see the game. It is terrible to think that I might see him killed before my eyes, but he is set on our going.'

و"

"It is all a piece of infernal nonsense," I remarked, with majestic dignity; nevertheless, the idea did not strike me as a bad one. To tell the truth, I was beginning to be curious to see this game, which, according to the views of my eldest son, was the greatest game of the day, and to those of Horace Plympton a barbaric spectacle.

come, for the first time in my existence, an object of consequence to my fellowcitizens, and almost to the world at large.

As for the hero himself, he bore his importance modestly and meekly, though he evidently considered that he had rescued the family name from obscurity and set it gloriously in the public

And now befell me a curious experience; at least it seemed to me such. I found that I, who, though considered an industrious and painstaking lawyer, have never awakened any especial interest in the community, had acquired lustre and importance by virtue of the circumstance that I had a son on the University foot-ball eleven. College graduates of various ages, who had hitherto classed me with the general run of their acquaintance, grew suddenly cordial and congratulatory in their manner, and I had the satisfaction of reading in the public prints an item to the effect that Frederick

the father of the well-known half-back of the Harvard University foot-ball eleven, had recently visited New York for a few days. Altogether I had be

eye by dint of his renown. He was in strict training, and fiercely conscientious as to what he ate and drank, and as to his hours of sleep. Little was heard in the house when he was at home but conjecture and estimate as to who was likely to win in the impending contest. Had I been properly attentive, I might have learned from his lips not merely the names and nicknames of the members of the respective teams and the positions on the field they were to fill, but their weights in fighting trim, their fine points both as foot-ball kickers and as men, and not improbably their love affairs. When now and then, as occasionally happened, I betrayed by an unfortunate question or by unappreciative silence my lack of familiarity with this

Everybody, or nearly everybody, carried a flag.

pal of Josephine's, appeared at the house one evening and laid before me, in his engaging, plausible fashion, a project which he and his wife and my wife had cooked up between them. He and Josephine assured me, in the first place, that I wouldn't have the least bother in the matter, and that everything would be perfectly plain running for the reason that Sam was intimate with the manager of the railroad, and that little Fred had secured the requisite number of tickets for the game. Then he proceeded to inform me that they had conceived the idea of going to see the game at Springfield in a private special car; that the manager had promised to let him have

one, and that it would be much more jolly to go with a few friends like that and have luncheon comfortably served by a caterer than to be lumped in the common cars with Tom, Dick, and Harry, who were liable to be noisy students, or still more noisy prize-fighters, and starve; that there were several people crazy to go whom it would be very pleasant to have, notably Mrs. Guy Sloane and Mrs. Walter Warner (née Polly Flinders), and that the expense would be comparatively trifling.

"I think it would be particularly nice, Fred, on Josie's account," added my wife. "I should ask two or three of her girls, and some boys to match. She is inclined to be shy, and this would be just the occasion to help her to feel at her ease with young men. Then I thought you would like to have a chat with Polly Warner; you so rarely see her now, and you and she used to get on so well together; and you know Mrs. Guy Sloane always stimulates you. I think you would have a very good time; and, as Sam says, it's a Dutch treat, so the expense would fall on everybody alike."

I

Seeing that Josephine's heart was set on going in just that way, I did not attempt to interpose objections. took the liberty, however, of remarking that, though we as the parents of one of the players had a reason for going, I could not understand why a cultivated woman like Mrs. Guy Sloane was willing, crazy indeed according to what they had said, to take so much trouble to see a pack of college youths knock each other about. In answer to this, Sam declared that every man, woman, and child in the city who could possibly get away was going to Springfield; that trains were to be run every fifteen minutes, and that no less than twenty special private cars in addition to ours had been chartered for the occasion. Again I hung my diminished head before this broadside of superior information.

Sam was perfectly right. I have rarely seen such a crowd in a small compass as was collected at the railway station before we started. How we ever reached Sam, who made himself visible to me at last across an ocean