A Shifting of Interest.

Here is another fact we must face: The election is off the front page of the newspapers. Locally, Dr. William Ashley Sunday is already a superior feature; and toward the end of the week, for a while, even he will yield to football. Not even such illusive suspense as may be manufactured out of the close vote in California and New Mexico avails to keep uppermost in our minds the questions of national honor that we were all willing--or were we willing?--to die for two weeks ago. The human interest of football is unquestioned and unquestionable. It was ever thus among people who had sporting blood in their veins. There were many people in ancient Greece whose patriotism did not prevent them from deeply resenting the intrusion of Leonidas and his battle of Thermopylae into the year 480 B. C., which was one of the years scheduled for the Olympian games. They regarded that as a great impertinence of patriotism. At all events, the integrity of Helas secured, the interest of the people gravitated back to the runners quite naturally. Our country saved, we are awarding the same preeminence to football. There is something in it. One race finished, why not on with the next? And the Harvard team consists of our finest, our biggest, our bravest, our Chosen Ones. The pride of Princeton goes down before them. Sentiment surges and trembles with the waving of grappling arms in the line-up.

After football there will still be the emotional ministrations of Dr. Sunday. Brightening the corners at the Tabernacle and perhaps darkening the corners of the mind, that interest will wax and wane. After that we know well what great thing will come. It will be Christmas, and the holly and misletoe, and the joyous annual exchange of gifts. No human interest like Christmas! Once it did not exist at all in New England! It was necessary to create it. It was created, and it filled the bill. It came in response to a demand of the human heart. There are those who think that a mere universal exchange of gifts most of which nobody wants, is a foolish institution; but the fact remains that our people once did not have it, and deliberately introduced it in its plentitude. They find it somehow well worth while, and they will cling to it. The ordinary observance of Christmas may represent a popular weakness, but if so it is a weakness of 99 human hearts out of every hundred. It will have its way. --Boston Transcript.