It's all well enough for them. They have their 'varsity sweaters with the big P on them, and have their pictures printed in the papers, and are pointed out and praised and petted and fondled and fussed over like blue-ribboned hunters at the horse show; but for the poor, faithful, unappreciated scrub it's a different story. There's none of the glory, and all work and grind and strain at the top notch of capacity. And nothing at the end of it but thanks and the consciousness of doing one's duty by the college. So about this time, when they were approaching that critical stage in training which is like getting one's second wind in a cross-country run, he used to have some terrible times with himself. If anyone knew what muckerishly cowardly thoughts he had, he was afraid they'd fire him from college. He was ashamed of himself, but he couldn't help it. He was getting sick of training, sick of getting up at seven o'clock in the morning and hurrying down to breakfast while the alarm clocks were going off in East and West colleges, and the frost was still on the grass. Every day, as soon as the morning recitations were over, no matter what kind of weather, he must jump into the 'bus at the corner of Dickinson Hall, drive down to the grounds, undress and dress again, and hobble out upon the field, and get his poor little body bumped and pounded and kicked and trampled on, and the rest of his personality yelled at by the captain, and scolded by the coachers, who stand alongside in nicely creased trousers, with canes in their hands, and call out, "Line up more quickly, scrub," which is hard to do when one's lungs are breathless, especially when one is a quarter-back, and needs a certain amount of wind to scream out the signals in a loud enough tone to keep from being sworn at. And that's the way they make football stuff. To-day he let Hartshorn drag him five yards and missed one tackle outright, and he was discouraged. After the line-up, while they were practising him at catching punts, he seemed to have such bad luck holding the ball; and once, in trying for a wild one when he had run over by the cinder track, grunting and straining, and had put up his little arms, only to feel the ball bounce off his chest, he gnashed his teeth so loud and said "Oh, dear!" in such a plaintive whimper, like a child waking from a bad dream, that two pipe-smoking seniors, who were trooping out in the rear of the crowd, smiled audibly and said something about him. He could not hear what it was. He only heard them laugh, and it nearly broke his heart. But all that he could do was to call them things under his breath, and run sniffling back to his place again.