"There is always more or less confusion in an affair of that sort and it was some minutes after the accident before the rescue work got under way. But one of the first rescuers I noticed was a young chap, a boy in fact, probably about seventeen years old. He didn't have a great deal on, I remember, but he was certainly Johnny-on-the-spot that morning! It was he who brought the first patient to me, a little dried-up Hebrew peddler I judged him, who had been caught under some wreckage in the forward day-coach. He had a broken forearm and while I was busy with him I saw this young chap climbing in and out of windows and wading through wreckage and always coming out again with someone. How many folks he pulled away from the flames and the scalding steam I don't know, but I never saw anyone work harder or more--more efficiently. Yes, efficiently is just the word I want! And I said to myself at the time: 'That fellow is a football man! And I'll bet he's a good one!' You see, it wasn't only that he had courage to risk himself, but he had the ability to see what was to be done and to do it, and do it quick! Why, he was pulling injured women and children and men from those burning, overturned cars before a grown-up man had sensed what had happened! And later on, when we'd done what we could for the burned and scalded bodies and limbs, I got hold of the boy for a moment. I asked him his name and he told it, and then I said: 'You've played football, haven't you?' And he said he had, a little. He wasn't much of a talker, and when some of us said some nice things about what he had done he got horribly fussed and tried to get away. But someone wanted to shake hands with him, and he wouldn't, and I saw that his own hand was burned all inside the palm, deep and nasty. 'How did you do that?' I asked him as I dressed it. Oh, he didn't know. He thought he'd got his hand caught between some beams or something; couldn't get it out for a minute. It wasn't much of a burn! Well, the wrecking train and a hospital train came along about then and I lost sight of that chap, and I didn't see him again. "I've told the story because I think it bears me out when I say that football is fine training. I don't say that that boy wouldn't have been just as brave and eager to help if he hadn't been a football player, but I do maintain that he wouldn't have known what to do as readily or how to do it and wouldn't have got at it as quickly. And when the flames are eating their way back from car to car quickness means a whole lot! That's the end of my story, boys. But while I've been telling it I've been looking for some sign to tell me that you recognised the hero of it. I don't find the sign and I'm puzzled. Perhaps you're so accustomed to heroes here at Brimfield that one more or less doesn't stir you. For the satisfaction of my own curiosity I'm going to ask you if you know who I've been talking about."