“MY DEAR BOY: I regret extremely to write that after carefully considering your letter and the letters of your friends, Ware and Laughlin, I cannot see a sufficient reason for changing my opinion with regard to your playing football. Your appeal touches my heart, but the arguments offered impress me as clever efforts to make the best of a bad cause, rather than as _bona fide_ reasons for a reversal of my decision. The evening paper, which I was reading when you called me to the telephone, reports among the day’s football news that Harvard has several good men ‘among the cripples’; that ‘Yale’s hospital list is large’; that Jones of Dartmouth will be out of the game for a fortnight at least with his shoulder; while Smith of Princeton is laid off with water on the knee, which will prevent his playing again the present season. These _may_ be ‘insignificant and temporary injuries,’ as your friends maintain, but they seem to be real enough to affect the prospects of the teams concerned. Cripples and the hospital are not terms which I like to hear habitually mentioned in connection with a sport in which my only son is engaged. “Now don’t misunderstand my position. I am no champion of effeminacy. I do not ask that you be shielded and coddled—in your own words ‘wrapped in lamb’s wool and shut up in a bureau drawer.’ I want you able to take your share in the rough things of life. There are hard knocks to be endured in almost all athletic exercises; in many, such as riding, sailing, swimming, there is actual risk. But the risk in these sports is slight and occasional—not much greater than that incurred in the ordinary course of life. In football the danger seems to be serious and constant. It is by no means necessary that you should play on the Seaton eleven; there are other sports in which you can develop strength and skill; there are other boys ready to take your place on the team. Desirous though I am to gratify your wishes in every reasonable way, it seems to me that I have no right to allow you to risk life or limb in a dangerous pastime.