Just as I began to get warmed to my new work I smashed my nose against the head of a Balliol man who was dodging back into the push. The captain told me that I need not finish the game; but as it is against the English rules to substitute players and we were still far from sure of winning, I kept to my grunting and shoving. At the end of the game the captain very politely gave me the hoof. This was just what I expected and deserved; but I was surprised to find that the fellows had objected to my playing the game through with a bloody nose. They would have preferred not to be bled upon. This regard for pleasantness and convenience, which to an American is odd enough, is characteristic even of 'varsity football. The slenderness of the preliminary training of a 'varsity fifteen is incredible to any American who has not witnessed it. To sift the candidates there is a freshman match and a senior match, with perhaps one or two "squashes"--that is to say, informal games--besides. And even these tests are largely a matter of form. Men are selected chiefly on their public school reputations or in consequence of good work on a college fifteen. The process of developing players, so familiar to us, is unknown. There is no coaching of any kind, as we understand the word. When a man has learned the game at his public school or in his college, he has learned it for all time, though he will, of course, improve by playing for the university. The need of concentrated practice is greatly lessened by the fact that the soft English winter allows as long a season of play as is desired. The team plays a game or two a week against the great club teams of England--Blackheath, Richmond, London Scottish, Cardiff, Newport, and Huddersfield--with perhaps a bit of informal kicking and punting between times. When the weather is too bad, it lays off entirely. All this does not conduce to the strenuousness of spirit Americans throw into their sports. In an inter-varsity match I saw the Oxford team which was fifty per cent. better allow itself to be shoved all over the field: it kept the game a tie only by the rarest good fortune. It transpired later that the gayeties of Brighton, whither the team had gone to put the finishing touches on its training, had been too much for it. In an American university such laxity would be thought the lowest depth of unmanliness, but I could not see that any one at Oxford really resented it; at most it was a subject for mild sarcasm. You can't expect a team to be in the push everywhere!