OPEN LETTER
TO A PAIR OF FOOTBALL BOOTS
(With acknowledgments to Mr. C. B. Fry in the "Daily Express ")
Dear old pals, I want to speak to you seriously and as man to man, because you're not mere dead hide, are you? No, no, you are intelligent, sentient soles, and to be treated as such by every player.
Ah! booties, booties, you little beauties, what a lot you mean to us, don't you? and how hardly we use you.
I've known men to take you off after a game, hurl you—as Jove hurled his thunderbolts—into a corner of the pav. and there leave you till you are next required.
Ah! old men, that's not right, is it? How would we great machines of bone, muscle, and nerve-centre (ah! those nerve-centres, what tricky things they are!), how would we be for the next match if we were treated like that? Pretty stiff and stale, eh, old booties?
Now, look here, when we come in after a hard,
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