If the awarding of ribbons as prizes could purge the ranks of school athletics of such cup-hunting, medal-seeking mercenaries as that young man frankly admits he is, I devoutly hope and pray the expedient may be adopted. In chemistry there is a way of testing fluids for impurities by applying certain acids. If some good genie would only come up out of the earth and apply the ribbon test to interscholastic sport as conducted in New York city, I can assure him he would get a response that would startle him. But I don't suppose there is any use of advocating the ribbon scheme. I know, as well as the next man, that it would be impracticable. The custom of awarding prizes of value has become too general for us to be able to do away with it, even in behalf of such a holy cause as the purification of sport. Such a step, too, would injure the clean as well as the unclean, and although there is no doubt the former would be quite willing to suffer temporarily for the sake of redeeming or of getting rid of the latter, the suggestion is too radical, I am well aware, to be put into execution. We shall have to look for some other method of routing these Tammanyites of interscholastic sport. A great many of these mercenary medal-hunters, like the young man I have quoted, will probably sneer at what I am now saying, and will perhaps consider me a crank. But a few years from now, if they still remain in the field of athletics (if they have not been chased out of it by ribbons or some other purifying element), they will see that I am right, and that this Department is none too severe in its arraignment of this class of sports. For they are "sports." They are not "sportsmen." There is a big difference between a "sport" and a "sportsman." A true "sportsman" is always a gentleman by instinct, if not by birth and education, and he engages in sport for sport's sake only. He does by others as he would be done by. A "sport" enters contests for mercenary motives, and as a rule prefers to do others. Young men who are just entering athletics, who are going into contests with other amateurs, and hope to continue to engage in sports through their school days and college days, and even after that time during hours not devoted to the serious work of life, cannot too soon become convinced of the fact and imbued with the idea that true sportsmanship lies in playing for the sake of the game, and not for the sake of the victory or for the prize that victory may bring. "Sport for sport's sake" should be the motto of every scholastic athletic association in the country, and of every boy who takes part in any game--from marbles up. [Illustration: Argensinger, m'g'r. Edwards, r. g. Kafer, f.-b. Righter, l. e. Noble, sub. Powell, q.-b. Dibble, l. h.-b. and Capt. Arrott, sub. Emerson, r. t. Cadwalader, l. t. Richards, l. g. Davis r. h.-b Eddy, r. e. Simons, c. THE LAWRENCEVILLE FOOTBALL TEAM.]