season, for good, as he thought, but the fascinations of the goal-posts and flying corner-flags was too much for him as a spectator at the first big game, and he yielded for another year, but it will be his last, for Maud, his beloved and beautiful Maud, will claim him as her own before June. "We have been long engaged," he is heard to say to an old club companion, "but this blessed football, of which I am very fond, has been the cause of putting off the marriage." I once knew a fine young fellow, a crack half-back, who was so anxious to play in an "International," that he positively swore he would never get married till he was one of the chosen team. He kept his word. He played twice for his country, got married, and, as the "unexpected does not always happen," is now the father of what may some day prove a race of stalwart football players. His handsome, though now slightly-bent form, is still often seen when a great event is being decided, accompanied by his wife and children, and woe betide the captain of his former club if he allows it to be beaten. "Well played; keep him off the ball, can't you!" he is heard to exclaim, till he is red in the face, and he goes home to dinner with something like an appetite. None but those who have positively come through all the grades of football probation really know what amount of labour, to say nothing of self-denial, is needed to make a crack back, half-back, or skilful forward. Sometimes one has to be contented with a place in the Second Eleven for years, before some incident, it may be, brings him to the front, and reveals true merit. In football, of course, as in other things, I have found that the best men were not always in their best places, and when this was the case, what is known as favouritism came in bold relief, but in the end the club in which such stupidity was rampant suffered very severely. It did all very well when the club were engaged in ordinary contests with weaker opponents, but it came out in some of the big events, in which the guilty club predominated in the selection of men to represent a city, a university, and even a country. Fortunately, however, I can honestly say that during the last few years there has been little of this practised, and Scotch football under both rules is all the better in consequence.