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{Newspaper Clipping]
FOOTBALL.
Tackling high, and tackling low,
Twelve years old and ready to go.
And his mother looks with a wistful
eye
At the not far distant by-and-by,
The dawn of the dangerous morning
when
He'll go to the field with older men.

And the mother says, in a mother's
way:
"When he's older grown he will eant
to play,
And the game is rough and the players
fall
And they never think of mothers at all;
They never think of our dread just
then
And the fears that come when our biys
are men."

What can I say and what can I do?
Time was I yearned for the scrimmage
too;
Time was I longed with an ardent soul
To battle my way to a far-flung goal,
And I know I'd have joyed at a hurt
back then
Just to take my place with the older
men.

Oh, the game is rough, and so are the
years,
And we all get hurt and we all shed
tears,
We are all thrown hard by the hand
of fate
And we all do things where the dan-
ger's great,
And a boy must learn-and 'tis will be
can-
In the game of life to play the man.
-Edgar A. Guest.