way that it will go straight to within a foot of a tree, _turn out for
the tree_, and resume its original course on the other side of it!

The football match between Yale and Princeton on Thanksgiving Day
(last Thursday in November) may, perhaps, be said to hold the place in
public estimation in America that the Oxford and Cambridge boat-race
does in England. In spite of the inclement season, spectators of
either sex turn out in their thousands; and the scene, except that
furs are substituted for summer frocks, easily stands comparison with
the Eton and Harrow day at Lord's. The field is surrounded in the same
way with carriages and drags, on which the colours of the rival teams
are profusely displayed; and there are the same merry coach-top
luncheons, the same serried files of noisy partisans, and the same
general air of festivity, while the final touch is given by the fact
that a brilliant sun is not rarer in America in November than it is in
England in June. The American game of football is a developed form of
the Rugby game; but is, perhaps, not nearer it than baseball is to
rounders. It is played by eleven a side. American judges think that
neither Rugby nor Association football approaches the American game
either in skill or in demand on the player's physical endurance. This
may be so: in fact, so far as my very inexpert point of view goes I
should say that it is so. Undoubtedly the American teams go through a
much more prolonged and rigid system of training, and their scheme of
tactics, codes of signals, and sharp devices of all kinds are much
more complicated. "Tackling" is probably reduced to a finer art than
in England. Mr. Whitney, a most competent and impartial observer, does
not think that our system of "passing" would be possible with American
tacklers. Whether all this makes a better _game_ is a very different
question, and one that I should be disposed to answer in the negative.
It is a more serious business, just as a duel _à outrance_ is a more