It had been a glorious day.
The first touch of winter was in the air, clear, crisp, and set the
blood a-tingling.
"Ideal football weather," the sporting writer of the _Journal_ had
called it in the early afternoon edition where, with the wisdom of his
species, he had sought to forecast the game's result.
In honor of the occasion a gracious citizenry had swathed Jefferson and
Woodward Avenues in bandages of maize and blue, and all day long the
small boy had been as active as though it were the fourth of July rather
than the fifth of November.
And now in the evening, the older portion of the citizenry withdrew, and
the theatres, the lobbies of the prominent hotels, the clubs, and all
the places of public meeting, were turned over, unconditionally, to
youth.
A kindly disposed commissioner of police had instructed his men to be
lenient.
"Boys will be boys," he said to the captain on night duty at the Central
Station, as he left the office.
"But what about the _girls_?" inquired the captain with a twinkle in
his own eyes that was almost youthful.
"Well--they will be, too--sometimes," the commissioner replied.
In the lobby of the Russell House, where the team was installed, the
mayor of Detroit--who himself had been an undergraduate once and
remembered it--addressed the throng below him, from the first broad
landing of the wide marble stairway.
His rounded periods were cheered to the echo; and when he drily observed
that all the policemen had been taken off duty the roof fairly lifted
and guests came pouring into the corridors, their faces clearly
indicating their alarm.
"You know," the mayor observed, his eyes twinkling,--"we've what they
call a slow town here. Well, it rests with you boys, for this night at
least, to make it fast. Moreover, it's an old town, a _very_ old town,
and wherever you find an absence of paint you have my permission and the
permission of the commissioner of police to redecorate. I suppose red
would be the proper tint. I have had a fondness for the color ever since
I was one of you--an undergrad. at old Ann Arbor----"
In the pandemonium that ensued the mayor judiciously withdrew. The crowd
"rushed" the lobby, and staid old men, in town over the day, sought
places of greater security on landings, behind pillars, and in corners
whence might be had a view of the proceedings without, necessarily,
participation.
One by one various members of the team appeared at the head of the
stairway and at each appearance a welcome of ringing cheers was sounded.
The director of athletics, a little man with a wiry mustache and a
square chin addressed the crowd from the top step after prolonged cries
of "Speech! Speech!"
The trainer, a huge man with a face like a fist, a Cockney accent, and
the shoulders of an ox, shouted a few phrases above the din. Each time
he uttered the word, "Michigan," which he insisted upon pronouncing
"Mitch-ti-gan," he was cheered wildly.
When Adams appeared on the upper landing and hesitated there the
commotion became deafening.
A section of the throng swept up to him, seized him and carried him
further down where he was made to blurt a few incoherent sentences in
which one caught, above the noise, a constant repetition of the
words--"fellows"--"great"--"wiped 'em up"--"knew it"--"right stuff"--and
others from the campus jargon, generally as unintelligible as Ute
gutterals.
Then he, too, descended and became an atom of the matter below as eager
to cry "Speech!" to the others when they should appear, as the mob about
him now had been to demand a word from him.
It all combined to constitute a riot of triumph, a veritable debauch in
the sensation of triumph--a triumph well won, and fairly; honestly
accepted, and as honestly celebrated by nearly three thousand as
irresponsible young spirits as ever took possession of a town.
Into the streets they poured. The police gritted their teeth and
restrained themselves with an effort, the strength of which their
tormentors did not dream.
Passers-by were good-naturedly jostled off the pavement by phalanxes of
obstreperous lads, who swept all before them as arm in arm, eight and
ten abreast, they advanced upon the city.
Money had been wagered and money had been won and there was money to
spend and be spent; and they spent it. They took possession of the
restaurants. In the theatres they shouted the choruses of all the songs
they knew, and between acts they whistled, stamped and applauded, in
that deadly unison and rhythm that has been known to bring buildings
tumbling about the heads of less vehement folk.
And why all this stampede of ecstasy?
Because two minutes before the umpire's call of time, John Adams, a
tall, broad, blonde giant, whom few of his worshippers really knew, had
found an elliptical pig-skin and, rushing like an engine of destruction
down a well turfed field, had touched it to the ground behind a pair of
slim, straight poles.