And it is chiefly in the children that the march of time is being most visibly displayed for us. Every month, or so it seems to us, they are altering before our eyes. And the adventures, as a consequence, have been chiefly theirs. Horace, for example, has filled out and solidified to an alarming extent during the last year or so, tips the scale at thirteen stone, ventures an occasional opinion on wine and the other members of its trinity, and has succeeded in attaining his Rugger "blue." It is his last year at Cambridge though and I'm afraid that the memory of his one and only Varsity match at Queen's is likely to be a little chequered. For, as you probably know, it was a record defeat; and though both teams were fairly matched as regarded the forwards, Oxford was vastly superior in all other departments of the game, as the sporting papers say. But it was a great spectacle for the onlookers. The Oxford threes, magnificently set in motion by their stand-off half, were quite an ideal picture of clever and unselfish attack. Time and again they swept down the field, alert, speedy, and opportunist, in the cleanest sense of the word. The weakness of the opposition flattered them, no doubt. But it was a splendid and invigorating exhibition for all that, and one that must have sent the blood tingling enviously down a good many middle-aged arteries. For there's always something superbly tonic about this particular match, emanating even more from the surrounding crowd than from the actual struggle of healthy young athletes that it has come to witness. There is no other large crowd quite like it, so unanimously well-coloured, clean, and cheerful, so lusty of shoulder and clear of eye. The winter air has set a colour in the girls' cheeks, to be heightened presently by the instructed ardour with which they follow the doings of their cousins and brothers, or cousins' and brothers' friends. And even the old duffers among us seem to don an infectious vitality as we greet our grey-haired friends by rope and doorway. The strained eyes and late-night cheeks that are not uncommon at such comparable gatherings as those at Lord's and Henley are to be sought in vain at this mid-winter festival. And I can think of no sounder answer to the modern cries of race-degeneracy than a stroll round Queen's at half-time. "Ah, but that shows you merely the cream," you may tell me. But then races, like milks, must be judged, I think, by the cream that they produce. And this particular spectacle at Queen's is sufficiently reassuring both as to quality and amount.