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The freshmen are to be heartily congratulated on the abundance of material promised for their foot-ball team this fall. Although the men were necessarily late in getting to work the delay was soon made up for by the dates. In the practice games with the university many of the freshmen are showing up very finely, and on the whole '87 may be considered as making a very fair start. They must remember, however, that they have only made the start as yet, and that improvement must be steady and rapid if they are to beat Yale this fall. For the first time the freshman eleven here will be under the supervision of the university eleven as it is at Yale, and it is hoped that this will give the '87 team an advantage over former freshmen elevens. But their time for practice will necessarily be much shorter than usual, so their work must be correspondingly more earnest and effective.

Yale is cautioning her freshmen to guard as zealously against a tie in this fall's game as they would against defeat, so '87 must not only strive to equal the record of last year's team, but to surpass it. With the good material already so abundantly furnished there is no reason that they should not do this if they will settle down to the hard work which can reasonably be expected of them. Such a warning should be unnecessary to a majority of the candidates, for many of them have previously met college teams during their practice on the school elevens, and have therefore had an opportunity to judge of the different style of game. But they must remember that the teams so met were only partially prepared for the great struggle with each other, and that their game was therefore imperfectly developed.

The new men must be reminded of what the two representative teams will have at stake, and they ought thus to judge for themselves what the nature of the work demanded of them is to be. The whole college stands ready to aid them with its encouragement and support, for they must share with them the victory or defeat which is to come. May '87 see their responsibility in time, and by improving on the good work done by '86 last year mat they succeed in again bringing the class championship to Harvard.