"In January, 1866, when John Leroux was just fourteen years of age, he easily passed the entrance examination to the great school in the Midlands and became a member of the house which his old friend Jim Kennedy had entered just a year earlier. Here he spent two and a half very happy years, and as at the end of that time he was only sixteen, he would in the ordinary course have continued his studies for at least another two years before leaving school, had it not been his father's wish that he should go abroad to learn French and German before reaching an age at which it would be necessary to settle down to the real business of life and make his own living. At the great school there were three half-holidays weekly, but the boys were expected to do a good deal of preparation for the next day's lessons during their leisure time. Some boys shirked these out-of-class studies, but Leroux always did whatever was expected of him most conscientiously and often very slowly and with much labour, as he never used a crib to assist him with his Latin and Greek translations. He was not at all brilliant, but was well up in the school for his age, and had he stayed another term would have been in the sixth--the highest form in the school. However famous the great Midland school may have been fifty years ago, as a seat of learning, it was certainly not less famous for the great game of football, the playing of which was as compulsory on the scholars as the study of Greek. Primitive Rugby football was a very different affair to the highly scientific game of the present day. There was more running with the ball, far less kicking into touch, and no heeling out behind the scrimmage. Hacking was not only permissible but was one of the main features of the game, and when the ball was put down in the scrimmage the object of each side was to 'hack it through,' that is, to clear a path for the ball by kicking the shins of every one in the way as hard as possible. There were twenty boys on each side in the old Rugby game of whom the backs and half-backs only numbered five altogether--such a thing as a three-quarter back was undreamt of--so that there were fifteen forwards on each side. When anyone ran with the ball, the cry was 'hack him over,' and as often as not the runner was brought down with a neat kick on the shin. It was altogether a rough, possibly a rather brutal game; but it made the boys strong and hardy, and with the exception of badly bruised shins there were very few accidents. A young boy, on his first entrance to the big school, could only wear duck trousers at football, but if he played up, and did not flinch from the hacking, the Captain of his twenty gave him his 'flannels' and then exchanged his duck for flannel trousers. There was no school twenty, and therefore no school