es of my most distinguished ancestor are
looking down at me from the wall, I feel bewildered, as it were, by
this latter-day metamorphosis, bristling with new and formidable
problems. Whither is civilization tending? What is one to think of it
all? And by the shades of my forefathers, purified by pie, how shall
we best help our sons and daughters to hitch their wagons to stars?
That is what is worrying Josephine and me.

IV

We have just faced our first serious problem.

Said my wife to me one day not long ago, handing me the newspaper as
she spoke, "Look at this, my dear. Little Fred has been selected to
play on the University foot-ball eleven."

By way of contradistinction to me, who am rather short and slight, my
namesake and eldest son is still habitually spoken of in the family as
Little Fred, notwithstanding that he is a head taller than I, and a
strongly built, muscular youth into the bargain. He is in college--a
sophomore--and I do not hesitate to declare that when he left school he
was about as clean cut a young fellow, both mentally and physically, as
anyone would wish to see. I have always encouraged him to take a
sensible amount of exercise and have been glad that he seemed fond of
the athletic sports in vogue among the growing lads of the country and
did not need to be prodded, like his brother David for instance, to
keep out of doors. I have been aware that he has been a prominent
member of an amateur base-ball nine and foot-ball eleven, and I have
been proud to follow in a confused sort of fashion, for the technical
terms have changed sadly since I was a boy, the defeats and victories,
principally the latter, I think, of those illustrious organizations.
Although I was never his equal physically, I look back with
considerable pride to my own foot-ball days, and my children have heard
me repeatedly describe the famous dash which I once made with the ball
from one end of the field to the other, with Tom Ruggs, the butcher's
boy, at my heels, and how he never caught me until after I had sent it
flying over the goal line, and we had won the game. That was a long
time ago now, and we played a very different game, as I have since
discovered. I hear a great deal said nowadays about the lack of
attention which the older generation gave to manly sports. We did not
make much fuss about them, I agree, and consequently some boys may have
been allowed to grow to manhood without proper physical train