LINOLEUM LAP-ROBES

Necessity, as the old saying might run, is the murder of convention. This is equally true whether the murder is committed by mere breakage or, as happened in Saturday's Battle of the Mud Flats, by drowning. After a perusal of the Sunday editions to find out who really did what in the Stadium, one is convinced that there were other heroes of the game beside Captain Hubbard or Captain Mallory; or, from a sartorial point of view, J. August or Paul Poiret. These unsung heroes were the humble souls who took up their position on the Anderson Bridge and just outside the gates of Soldiers' Field to offer for sale short sections of vani-colored oilcloth.

Once the unsportsmanlike downpour, however, having seen its victims definitely wedged each in his own Sitz bath, had started in to do a little constructive drenching, the laugh was shed gently from the oilcloth shoulders of the proletariat onto the sogginess of mackintosh and rubber-silk rainster. It is not hard to predict that another such a day will see the covering of mother's kitchen table going at a premium and linoleum lap-robes across the knees of the elite.

Precedent gives this a portent. The "chummy roadster" definitely abolished the bustle, and Coles Phillips popularized the silk stocking; surely rain can do as much for oilcloth. The next football season should find the well-dressed man discarding his coonskin coat and Oxford brogues for the yellow oilskin and rubber boots hitherto sacred to the fishing boats of Gloucester; and in order to preserve the sport writer's usual "touch of color", Paquin and Joseph may even be driven to turning out their vivid designs in fabric guaranteed to save the permanent wave.