FRANK LEARNS TO TACKLE THE DUMMY. "How does that ankle feel?" inquired the Freshman coach of Frank Armstrong one afternoon at practice on the week following the Exeter game. "I see you stepping around quite lively on it." "I think it is good enough, sir," said Frank. It was far from a well ankle, but Frank was desperately anxious to get into the game from which he had been denied on account of his accident, and was willing to take a chance with it. He had felt that he was going to be overlooked entirely in spite of the fact that he had kept in training and had done as much as he could under the conditions. "Good enough then. Do you know the signals?" "Yes, sir." "Well, then take some practice now and later I want to try you at quarter on the Second. You played there on your prep. school team, eh?" "Yes, sir," said Frank, his heart jumping at the thought that he was to have his chance, after all. "All of you over to the 'Varsity field," commanded the coach. "The exhibition of tackling in that Exeter game was enough to make a strong man weep, not a half dozen clean ones in the whole game. I'll teach you to stop a man or kill you in the attempt," and Coach Howard, with a determined face, led his squad into the great wooden amphitheater where at one end below the goal line stood two tackling dummies, looking very much like gallows, each with the canvas-clad shape of a man dangling from a rope over a pit of sawdust and loam. There had been some tackling practice early in the season in which Frank had not participated on account of his injured ankle, so the experience for him to-day was to be a new one. "Now, this is the way, watch me carefully," said Howard. "Start from here," indicating a point about fifty feet from the dummy, "get under way quickly, increase your speed toward the end of the run, spring off one foot, not a dive, remember, strike the dummy with your shoulder just under the hips, and wrap your arms around the legs. This way," and suiting the action to the word, Howard, who was in football uniform, dashed at the swinging figure, struck it with a crash, carried it from its fastening on a clean, driving tackle. "Now line up and all take your turn," said the coach as he came back to the group. "Lead off, Bostwick." Bostwick was an old end from Andover, who had come down to Yale with a reputation already made, and who had been chosen captain of the team. After Bostwick ran a steady string of the Freshmen tackling the dummy, some cleanly, some awkwardly. A field assistant picked up the canvas-clad figure, and replaced it on the hook after each savage assault, ready for the next man, while the coach stood by, offering criticism and suggestion.