dn't have happened. If a
prize were offered for ivory domes, I'd win it, sure."

"Of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these--it might have been,"

quoted Tom Eldridge, who usually had something pat in the poetical line
for all occasions.

"Lay off on the spouting stuff, Tom," said Ned Wayland, "and you fellows
stop your grizzling and come down to the football field. It's a dandy
afternoon for practice."

It was a wonderful October day, with a crisp breeze coming from the lake
that moderated the warmth of the sun, and the boys were stirred by the
thrill of youth and life that ran through every vein.

It was too much for Tom, despite the sarcasm with which his previous
effort had been greeted, and he burst out:

"There is that nameless splendor everywhere,
That wild exhilaration in the air----"

He dodged a pass that Ned made at him.

"Let me alone," he chortled. "Don't you see that I can't help it?"

"The lyric joys that in me throng,
Seek to express themselves in song."

The other lads gave it up.

"A hopeless case," murmured Ned, shaking his head sadly.

"Yes," mourned Fred. "And he used to be such a nice fellow, too, before
he went bughouse."

"You rough necks are jealous," grinned Tom. "You'd have tried to
discourage Shakespeare, if you'd been living then.

"Lucky for the world, you weren't living then," he went on. "For that
matter you're not living now. You're dead ones, but you don't know it."

They were still trying to think up a sufficiently cutting response when
they came in sight of the football field.

It was an animated scene. A dozen or more boys in their football togs
were running over the field, while many more crowded round the side
lines as spectators. There was a dummy, at which some of the players
were throwing themselves in turn to get tackling practice. Others were
running down under punts, and still others were getting instructions in
the forward pass.

The game with the Lake Forest School, one of their principal rivals, was
now only two weeks off, and the boys were working for dear life to get
into form. They had a good team, although three of their best players of
the year before had not returned to school this fall.

Teddy was a little too light for the heavy work required in football,
although he would have made a good quarter-back, where quickness is more
necessary than weight. But that position was already filled by Billy
Burton,