GRUELLING FOOTBALL PRACTICE



A shrill whistle sounded over the field where almost two dozen
sturdily built boys in their middle 'teens, clad in an astonishing
array of old and new football togs, had been struggling furiously.

Instantly the commotion ceased as if by magic at this intimation from
the coach, who also acted in practice as referee and umpire combined,
that the ball was to be considered "dead."

Some of those who helped to make the pack seemed a bit slow about
relieving the one underneath of their weight, for a half-muffled voice
oozed out of the disintegrating mass:

"Get off my back, some of you fellows, won't you? What d'ye take me
for--a land tortoise?"

Laughing and joking, the remaining ingredients of the pyramid
continued to divorce themselves from the heap that at one time had
appeared to consist principally of innumerable arms and legs.

Last of all a long-legged boy with a lean, but good-natured face, now
streaked with perspiration and dirt, struggled to his feet, and began
to feel his lower extremities sympathetically, as though the terrific
strain had centered mostly upon that particular part of his anatomy.

But under his arm he still held pugnaciously to the pigskin oval ball.
The coach, a rather heavy-set man who limped a little, now came