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 weak spine. But Dick had not been content to merely look on and envy. He had studied while he watched, often, for his own amusement, imagining himself in the place of some more fortunate youth and telling himself just what he would do in such a case. To that end Dick read up on all the sports until, theoretically at least, he knew more about them by half than most of the fellows who participated. No one followed the baseball and football and track teams more closely than Dick. He seldom missed a contest. And, while others were content to observe results, Dick had to know the reasons for them. Many were the football problems he had worked out at home with a checkerboard and checkers, or with matches on a table-top, and many the imaginary games he had captained. Dick, in short, was a self-taught athlete, a book-learning one. But that book-learning and self-instruction may produce results had already been proved in the Summer, when he had piloted the baseball nine to many victories, and was now in a fair way to being proved again.

Dick didn't know it all, however. No fellow who has never actually played as well as studied can possess an all-around knowledge of the game. Dick was ignorant, for instance, of certain niceties of line