opposing backs, I know to my loss, and a very great depreciation in tear and wear. He was a veritable "dodger," this owner of mine. Never afraid of a charge, he would, in order either to secure the ball or keep it, attack the biggest man in an opposing team, aye, and knock him over, too. Sometimes he lost his temper when things went against him, and, while his remarks to an adversary were somewhat cutting and at times verging on impertinence, they were always within the scope of "Parliamentary." In after life, however, my master found several foemen worthy of his steel amongst backs and half-backs in the Flying Blues, the Crowers, the Cedargrove, Red Cross, and North Western, and he sometimes came off second best. It is all very well to say that there were "great men in those days." So there were, but the same remark can be made equally applicable now, for they are even more common, and you find them scattered over the length and breadth of the land. It would decidedly weary you, my friend and reader, were I to detail all the games in which I have taken an active part, and you will at once admit that I may succeed in pleasing you better if I give a short sketch of the leading clubs and players who have wrought so hard and done so much to make the Association game so popular. Jim Wild has been mentioned in connection with his club (the Conquerors), but it is necessary to give him a line or two more. There was no other Association club in Scotland when the Conquerors were put into ship-shape order, and consequently no opponents to play. They could not challenge themselves to mortal combat, and there were none but Rugby clubs, whose members treated the new order of things in football as childish amusement, and unworthy of free-born Britons. "Give us," they said, "the exciting runs, the glorious tackling, the manly maul, and the beautiful dropped goal, and we will meet you a bit of the way, but not otherwise. We don't believe in loafing about the field at times, when only one or two of the side are engaged; we want to be active." "Well," said the Conquerors (one of whom had been offered a place in the Twenty in the Rugby match between Glasgow and Edinburgh), "you don't know Association rules, or you would never make such absurd assertions about the new game. If there is really any inactivity in football while being played, that inaction is clearly shown in a Rugby maul, where the one half of the side are merely spectators. Besides, your game is only half football; in fact, a combination of football and handball knocked into one. Your run with the ball under the arm is only a display of speed; it has nothing whatever to do with football. We want the grand dribbling run with the ball at the toe, the smart passing and middling of the Association, and we will enjoy it." Such good-natured banter went on at first between two opposing interests, but by and by the difference culminated into something more.