It was on Thursday that Dick returned from a hard practice to find a letter from his father awaiting him. Mr. Bates wrote regularly each week, usually on Sunday, so that his letter arrived at school Monday afternoon or Tuesday morning. The present epistle was an extra one and Dick opened it with some curiosity. When he had read it through he was alternately smiling and frowning. It wasn’t long, but it was emphatic. “Dear Dick: “Every time I take up the _Sentinel_ these days I find a piece about you in it. How you did something or other in a football game and how proud the town is of you. What I want to know is, do you do anything at that school but play football. I’m getting right-down tired of reading about you. I sent you there to study and learn things and get a good education and not to play football and get your name in the papers all the time like a prize-fighter. You buckle down and attend to your work for a spell, that’s my advice to you. If I keep on seeing where you’ve made a home run or whatever it is I’m going to yank you out of there plaguey quick. Folks keep asking me have I seen where you did so and so and ain’t I proud of you, and I tell them No, I ain’t a blame bit proud, because I didn’t send you to school to play games, but to make a man of yourself. I hope you are well, as I am at the present writing. “Your aff. father, “Henry L. Bates.” Dick read that letter to Stanley and Stanley chuckled a good deal over it. “Of course he is proud of you, just the same, Dick,” he said. “But I dare say there’s something to be said for his point of view. You’ll have to convince him that you’re doing a bit of studying now and then on the side, eh?” “I suppose so. But he ought to know that if I wasn’t keeping my end up in class I’d be hiking home mighty quick! Maybe I ought to work harder, Stan, and let football alone, but, gee, a fellow’s got to do something besides study!” “Can’t you persuade the editor of that home paper of yours to let up on you for awhile? How do you do it, anyway? Nobody in my home ever sees my doings in print. Got a drag with the editor, or what?” “It’s the High School _Argus_,” responded Dick a trifle sheepishly. “The fellows that run it got _The Leader_ here to exchange with them and they print everything about me they see in _The Leader_. Of course that isn’t much: just the accounts of the games: but the _Argus_ fellows work it up and then the _Sentinel_ copies it. I--I wish they wouldn’t.”