WE cannot too strongly condemn the rapidly growing custom of lauding immoderately our victorious teams, and trying to find excuses for them when defeated, instead of encouraging them more nearly to perfect themselves, in the first instance; and in the second, of striving to discover and rectify the causes of their non-success. A fault, to be corrected, must be known; and if we make a point of sparing the feelings of our athletic representatives by charitably blinding ourselves to their obvious failings, so long must we expect to see those failings remain prevalent. A team may do hard and conscientious work all through the winter, and yet in the spring meet with utter and signal defeat; and in such a case, while we should give them full credit for the hard work they have done, we must not content ourselves with patting them on the back and calling them unfortunate victims of circumstances, but we must allow the possibility of their labor having been misapplied, and do our best to find out how it could have been applied better. In thus condemning too enthusiastic praise, we do not in any way favor the opposite extreme, discouragement being to our mind quite as undesirable; but if, in talking to and of our teams, we should be willing to acknowledge their short comings when they exist, and not to give their existing good points more praise than they deserve, it seems to us we should be adopting the right method to put our athletics on a firm and lasting basis.