- oughly test out its defensive strength against open
plays. Weston, too, had been left without a game on the eleventh of November, and was very glad to accept Cotner's offer of the date.
Secret practice began the following day and Clearfield was set the task of learning a new formation and a number of plays from it. Dick now considered that the team was well enough versed in the fundamentals, although more than once in the ensuing two weeks of practice fellows were sent back to the dummy or drilled in other rudimentary branches when they showed signs of forgetting their a, b, c's. Dick had not yet attempted to develop the attack beyond what might be required of it from week to week. He had spent the first six weeks of the season in grounding the players in elementary football, in developing what he called the wits of the fellows—by which he meant the ability to think quickly in all sorts of situations and act accordingly—and in securing coherence. There had been a period when every fellow played for himself, a later period when the line and the backfield played as though they were in no way related, and now there had come a third stage of development in which the entire team of eleven men played together. Ab-
