It was a philanthropic match, between Bursley and Axe, for the benefit of a county orphanage, and, according to the custom of such matches, the ball was formally kicked off by a celebrity, a pillar of society.  The ceremony of kicking off has no sporting significance; the celebrity merely with gentleness propels the ball out of the white circle and then flies for his life from the melee; but it is supposed to add to the moral splendour of the game.  In the present instance the posters said:  “Kick-off at 3.45 by Councillor E.H.  Machin, Mayor-designate.”  And, indeed, no other celebrity could have been decently selected.  On the fine afternoon of the match Denry therefore discovered himself with a new football at his toes, a silk hat on his head, and twenty-two Herculean players menacing him in attitudes expressive of an intention to murder him.  Bursley had lost the toss, and hence Denry had to kick towards the Bursley goal.  As the Signal said, he “despatched the sphere” straight into the keeping of Callear, who as centre forward was facing him, and Callear was dodging down the field with it before the Axe players had finished admiring Denry’s effrontery.  Every reader will remember with a thrill the historic match in which the immortal Jimmy Brown, on the last occasion when he captained Blackburn Rovers, dribbled the ball himself down the length of the field, scored a goal, and went home with the English Cup under his arm.  Callear evidently intended to imitate the feat.  He was entirely wrong.  Dribbling tactics had been killed for ever, years before, by Preston North End, who invented the “passing” game.  Yet Callear went on, and good luck seemed to float over him like a cherub.  Finally he shot; a wild, high shot; but there was an adverse wind which dragged the ball down, swept it round, and blew it into the net.  The first goal had been scored in twenty seconds! (It was also the last in the match.) Callear’s reputation was established.  Useless for solemn experts to point out that he had simply been larking for the gallery, and that the result was a shocking fluke—­Callear’s reputation was established.  He became at once the idol of the populace.  As Denry walked gingerly off the field to the grand stand he, too, was loudly cheered, and he could not help feeling that, somehow, it was he who had scored that goal.  And although nobody uttered the precise thought, most people did secretly think, as they gazed at the triumphant Denry, that a man who triumphed like that, because he triumphed like that, was the right sort of man to be mayor, the kind of man they needed.