The football match between Yale and Princeton on Thanksgiving Day (last Thursday in November) may, perhaps, be said to hold the place in public estimation in America that the Oxford and Cambridge boat-race does in England.  In spite of the inclement season, spectators of either sex turn out in their thousands; and the scene, except that furs are substituted for summer frocks, easily stands comparison with the Eton and Harrow day at Lord’s.  The field is surrounded in the same way with carriages and drags, on which the colours of the rival teams are profusely displayed; and there are the same merry coach-top luncheons, the same serried files of noisy partisans, and the same general air of festivity, while the final touch is given by the fact that a brilliant sun is not rarer in America in November than it is in England in June.  The American game of football is a developed form of the Rugby game; but is, perhaps, not nearer it than baseball is to rounders.  It is played by eleven a side.  American judges think that neither Rugby nor Association football approaches the American game either in skill or in demand on the player’s physical endurance.  This may be so:  in fact, so far as my very inexpert point of view goes I should say that it is so.  Undoubtedly the American teams go through a much more prolonged and rigid system of training, and their scheme of tactics, codes of signals, and sharp devices of all kinds are much more complicated.  “Tackling” is probably reduced to a finer art than in England.  Mr. Whitney, a most competent and impartial observer, does not think that our system of “passing” would be possible with American tacklers.  Whether all this makes a better game is a very different question, and one that I should be disposed to answer in the negative.  It is a more serious business, just as a duel a outrance is a more serious business than a fencing match; but it is not so interesting to look at and does not seem to afford the players so much fun.  There is little running with the ball, almost no dropping or punting, and few free kicks.  The game between Princeton and Yale which I, shivering, saw from the top of a drag in 1891, seemed like one prolonged, though rather loose, scrimmage; and the spectators fairly yelled for joy when they saw the ball, which happened on an average about once every ten or fifteen minutes.  Americans have to gain five yards for every three “downs” or else lose possession of the ball; and hence the field is marked off by five-yard lines all the way from goal to goal.  American writers acknowledge that the English Rugby men are much better kickers than the American players, and that it is now seldom that the punter in America gets a fair chance to show his skill.  There are many tiresome waits in the American game; and the practice of “interference,” though certainly managed with wonderful skill, can never seem quite fair to one brought upon the English notions of “off-side.”  The concerted cheering of the students of each university, led by a regular fugle-man, marking time with voice and arms, seems odd to the spectator accustomed to the sparse, spontaneous, and independent applause of an English crowd.