The reform in interscholastic athletics in the middle West seems to be going forward most satisfactorily. We hear fewer complaints of semi-professionalism among the school teams, and most of these have no foundation in fact. It seems clear now that most of the breaches of amateur spirit that we have had to record heretofore were largely the result of a lack of knowledge and appreciation of the strictness of the rules which have to govern amateur sport, rather than of a desire to defeat the ends and purposes of these regulations. [Illustration: MADISON, WISCONSIN, HIGH-SCHOOL FOOTBALL TEAM.] As has been chronicled in this Department, Madison High-School at one time allowed two players on its football team to take courses at the university while still attending school. The fact that they attended the university at all should have disqualified these men; but the Madisonians did not interpret the rules in that way. Now, however, they have come to see that this sort of thing involves a principle, and that it cannot be allowed. The past season, therefore, so far as I am able to find out, the Madison High-School team has been made up strictly of students of the school, and the players have taken up football for the sport of the game, rather than for the sake of the empty honor of a championship. This "championship" business is getting to be very much overestimated and exaggerated, and may eventually do much harm to sport; but this is another subject, and we shall have to come back to that at another time. The Madison High-School team had a uniformly successful season this fall, although, because of its reputed strength on the gridiron, its managers found some difficulty in securing games with other high-school teams. The Madisonians were therefore compelled to arrange a number of games with elevens which might not ordinarily be considered in their class. For the second time they defeated the St. John's Military Academy team, the only eleven which has ever defeated Madison H.-S.,--barring the university team. The strongest opponents they met were the Minneapolis H.-S. eleven. Five days after this hard game they played a team which came up from Chicago, representing the Hyde Park High-School, but I have never been able to find out what percentage of the members of this eleven ever saw the inside of a Hyde Park school-room. The managers and players of the team were not above practising deception either, for some of their men played against Madison under assumed names.