s in a
circle as he left the grass behind his heels, piloting the ball past the
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 clea