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 *solute perfection of team-play was still lacking, and Dick was satisfied that it should be, for he was convinced that no football team ever reached the top-notch of excellence and stayed there twenty-four hours. Dick believed that the team which attained the height of its season's form to-day began to go back to-morrow, and his biggest fear was that Clearfield High School would reach the zenith of development too early. His ambition, in short, was to trot the Purple on to the field on the eighteenth of November ready to play as it had not played all the Fall and as it could not play the day after. How nearly he would succeed in realizing that ambition remained to be seen.

While he had not yet paid much attention to offense, an offense had developed naturally on the groundwork he had prepared, an offense which, found wanting in several contests, had come into its own in the Benton game. With the defense, however, Dick had started early, since, when all is said, a good defense is harder to construct than a good attack. Consequently the team's offense was a full fortnight behind its defense, and offensively and defensively both it was far more backward than Springdale. Dick, though, was not worrying about