IV

We have just faced our first serious problem.

Said my wife to me one day not long ago, handing me the newspaper as

she spoke, "Look at this, my dear. Little Fred has been selected to

play on the University foot-ball eleven."

By way of contradistinction to me, who am rather short and slight, my

namesake and eldest son is still habitually spoken of in the family as

Little Fred, notwithstanding that he is a head taller than I, and a

strongly built, muscular youth into the bargain. He is in college--a

sophomore--and I do not hesitate to declare that when he left school he

was about as clean cut a young fellow, both mentally and physically, as

anyone would wish to see. I have always encouraged him to take a

sensible amount of exercise and have been glad that he seemed fond of

the athletic sports in vogue among the growing lads of the country and

did not need to be prodded, like his brother David for instance, to

keep out of doors. I have been aware that he has been a prominent

member of an amateur base-ball nine and foot-ball eleven, and I have

been proud to follow in a confused sort of fashion, for the technical

terms have changed sadly since I was a boy, the defeats and victories,

principally the latter, I think, of those illustrious organizations.

Although I was never his equal physically, I look back with

considerable pride to my own foot-ball days, and my children have heard

me repeatedly describe the famous dash which I once made with the ball

from one end of the field to the other, with Tom Ruggs, the butcher's

boy, at my heels, and how he never caught me until after I had sent it

flying over the goal line, and we had won the game. That was a long

time ago now, and we played a very different game, as I have since

discovered. I hear a great deal said nowadays about the lack of

attention which the older generation gave to manly sports. We did not

make much fuss about them, I agree, and consequently some boys may have

been allowed to grow to manhood without proper physical training; but

it seems to me that most of us were playing something in the fresh air

the greater portion of the time. However, I have always been a great

believer in manly sports and I wish to continue to be.

When my boy entered college I remember telling him kindly but

explicitly that it was a costly matter to send him there, and that I

should expect him to make the most of the opportunities for improvement

which were offered him. I knew that he was not especially clever at

his books like his brother David, yet at the same time I had set him

down as a sensible, wide-awake fellow with at least an average amount

of brains and with plenty of tact and common sense. It was my hope

that he would devote himself to political economy and mathematics, in

which case I should try and find an opening for him after graduation

with the firm of Leggatt & Paine, our leading bankers. I expected, of

course, that he would continue to take a suitable amount of exercise,

to keep himself in good trim; row on the river and not altogether

renounce base-ball. Indeed, although I was aware that collegiate

sports were a much more serious tax on a student's time than in my day,

I should not have seriously demurred had he been selected to row on the

University crew or play on the University base-ball nine. I should

have greatly preferred to have him steer clear of both; still, I try to

remember that I was once his age myself, and I am given to understand

that the rivalry between the several colleges in these matters is more

intense than ever. There was a time when nothing seemed to me of such

vital interest as whether Harvard or Yale won the boat race. The

Darwinian theory paled in comparative importance beside it. Indeed, I

still take more interest in it than it deserves, perhaps.

Nevertheless, I took pains to impress upon Fred that his studies were

to be his first consideration.

We did not play foot-ball in college when I was there, which was the

reason, perhaps, why I assumed that it was a boy's game, to be shuffled

off with other purely youthful sports when one became a dignified

student. I had heard here and there the statement that it was a rough

game, which did not impress me very much, recalling as I did my own

hacked shins. It was not until I read my friend Horace Plympton's

letter to the _Evening Times_, that my attention was particularly

called to the matter. Horace seemed to have lashed himself into a

perfect fury on the subject. He stigmatized the modern game as it was

played by University students as a barbaric spectacle, dangerous to

limb, if not to life. Horace has always been more or less of a

pepper-pot, but he is not exactly a croaker, and he served in the war

with distinction. Hence his diatribe made me frown, even though it

rather amused me. It was written in the autumn of the year before Fred

went to Cambridge, and I read it aloud to the family circle as being of

interest to a sub-freshman.

"What perfect nonsense!" exclaimed that profound young gentleman, when

I had finished. "The man who wrote that letter is a flub-dub, father."

Though not aware of the precise meaning of this epithet, I realized

that it was a severe arraignment. I felt, too, that my manner of

reading the communication had given license to my boy's tongue. I

answered, therefore, with some unction:

"The writer, Horace Plympton, is a brave and sensible man. I know him

very well."

"I guess he never kicked foot-ball."

"In his day the young men who were fortunate enough to be sent to

college were better occupied. Foot-ball? It is a game for

high-schools, not universities."

"It is the greatest game of the day, father," said my sub-freshman,

with the haughty consciousness of superior knowledge which the waning,

though reigning, generation has so often to bow to.

Of course that settled the question. I believe that I made a futile

remark to the effect that the president ought to put a stop to it, or

something of the sort, but I knew enough to know that I had been

convicted of error. I saw Fred glance at his sisters, and all three at

their mother, who looked anxious in her desire not to seem to take

sides against me, though manifestly sympathizing with them. I said to

myself that if foot-ball was the greatest game of the day, I was not

going to put my foot down and prevent my boys from playing it merely

because I was old fogy enough not to understand that it was the

greatest game of the day, and Horace Plympton had written a letter to

the _Evening Times_. Accordingly, when the time came for Fred to go to

college I merely cautioned him generally against wasting his time, and

uttered no fulminations against foot-ball in particular.

"On the University foot-ball eleven?" I echoed, taking the newspaper

from my wife, and as I read I felt a little lump of emotional pride

rise in my throat. There it was, sure enough, in black and white,

though I could not help wondering why the fact was of importance enough

to be chronicled in the daily press along with the telegraphic news,

and the deaths and marriages. It was evidently a matter of

considerable moment, though I could not quite see why.

"He will be perfectly delighted," said Josephine. "He has been

extremely doubtful whether he would be chosen. Oh, Fred," she

exclaimed, in a tone of solicitude, "do you really think it's safe?"

How exactly that was like a woman. Here was my wife, who had secretly

aided and abetted her son in his design, and been the recipient of his

hopes and fears on the subject, turning to me, who had dared to utter a

feeble protest or two only to be scoffed at, and summarily sat upon,

asking if the game was really safe.

"There are certain risks in this world that a man has to take," I

answered, borrowing the sentiment which she had uttered on the occasion

of our affair with the burglars.

Josephine did not appreciate my irony. "Why, oh why, did you give your

consent to his playing foot-ball?" she asked, tragically. "I

understand that it is a terribly rough and dangerous game."

"I give my consent? This is monstrous, Josephine, monstrous. I did

not wish to be a killjoy and a marplot, or I would have forbidden Fred

to touch a foot-ball after he entered college. Had you, my dear, given

me the least bit of support, I should have nipped the whole business in

the bud. Yet now you seek to throw the blame on me."

The suggestion of the dire parental sternness of which I had evidently

just missed being guilty caused her thoughts to fly off on an opposite

tack. "The poor darling, his heart was so set on being chosen," she

said. "I am sure, Fred, it would have been a terrible blow to him if

he had not succeeded."

"I dare say that it was his chief motive in going to college," I

interjected, a little indignantly.

"I really think it was," she murmured, with sweet maternal sympathy.

"I shall live though in constant dread until it is over and done with."

"What is over and done with?"

"The Harvard-Yale foot-ball match. It's on account of that he's been

so anxious to belong. And, Fred, he said to me the other day that if

he was chosen, he hoped that we would go to Springfield to see the

game. It is terrible to think that I might see him killed before my

eyes, but he is set on our going."

"It is all a piece of infernal nonsense," I remarked, with majestic

dignity; nevertheless, the idea did not strike me as a bad one. To

tell the truth, I was beginning to be curious to see this game, which,

according to the views of my eldest son, was the greatest game of the

day, and to those of Horace Plympton a barbaric spectacle.

And now befell me a curious experience; at least it seemed to me such.

I found that I, who, though considered an industrious and painstaking

lawyer, have never awakened any especial interest in the community, had

acquired lustre and importance by virtue of the circumstance that I had

a son on the University foot-ball eleven. College graduates of various

ages, who had hitherto classed me with the general run of their

acquaintance, grew suddenly cordial and congratulatory in their manner,

and I had the satisfaction of reading in the public prints an item to

the effect that Frederick ----, the father of the well-known half-back

of the Harvard University foot-ball eleven, had recently visited New

York for a few days. Altogether I had become, for the first time in my

existence, an object of consequence to my fellow-citizens, and almost

to the world at large.

As for the hero himself, he bore his importance modestly and meekly,

though he evidently considered that he had rescued the family name from

obscurity and set it gloriously in the public eye by dint of his

renown. He was in strict training, and fiercely conscientious as to

what he ate and drank, and as to his hours of sleep. Little was heard

in the house when he was at home but conjecture and estimate as to who

was likely to win in the impending contest. Had I been properly

attentive, I might have learned from his lips not merely the names and

nicknames of the members of the respective teams and the positions on

the field they were to fill, but their weights in fighting trim, their

fine points both as foot-ball kickers and as men, and not improbably

their love affairs. When now and then, as occasionally happened, I

betrayed by an unfortunate question or by unappreciative silence my

lack of familiarity with this or that celebrity, the look of wondering

pity with which my boy, and indeed every member of the family, regarded

me made me feel myself to be a veritable ignoramus. Josephine and her

girls knew the whole business from beginning to end, and I must confess

that I secretly drank in more than I pretended.

A fortnight before the match was to come off Sam Bangs, who, as some of

you will remember, is a second cousin of mine and rather a pal of

Josephine's, appeared at the house one evening and laid before me, in

his engaging, plausible fashion, a project which he and his wife and my

wife had cooked up between them. He and Josephine assured me, in the

first place, that I wouldn't have the least bother in the matter, and

that everything would be perfectly plain running for the reason that

Sam was intimate with the manager of the railroad, and that little Fred

had secured the requisite number of tickets for the game. Then he

proceeded to inform me that they had conceived the idea of going to see

the game at Springfield in a private special car; that the manager had

promised to let him have one, and that it would be much more jolly to

go with a few friends like that and have a luncheon comfortably served

by a caterer than to be lumped in the common cars with Tom, Dick, and

Harry, who were liable to be noisy students, or still more noisy

prize-fighters, and starve; that there were several people crazy to go

whom it would be very pleasant to have, notably Mrs. Guy Sloane and

Mrs. Walter Warner (nee Polly Flinders), and that the expense would be

comparatively trifling.

"I think it would be particularly nice, Fred, on Josie's account,"

added my wife. "I should ask two or three of her girls, and some boys

to match. She is inclined to be shy, and this would be just the

occasion to help her to feel at her ease with young men. Then I

thought you would like to have a chat with Polly Warner; you so rarely

see her now, and you and she used to get on so well together; and you

know Mrs. Guy Sloane always stimulates you. I think you would have a

very good time; and, as Sam says, it's a Dutch treat, so the expense

would fall on everybody alike."

Seeing that Josephine's heart was set on going in just that way, I did

not attempt to interpose objections. I took the liberty, however, of

remarking that, though we as the parents of one of the players had a

reason for going, I could not understand why a cultivated woman like

Mrs. Guy Sloane was willing, crazy indeed according to what they had

said, to take so much trouble to see a pack of college youths knock

each other about. In answer to this, Sam declared that every man,

woman, and child in the city who could possibly get away was going to

Springfield; that trains were to be run every fifteen minutes, and that

no less than twenty special private cars in addition to ours had been

chartered for the occasion. Again I hung my diminished head before

this broadside of superior information. Sam was perfectly right. I

have rarely seen such a crowd in a small compass as was collected at

the railway station before we started. How we ever reached Sam, who

made himself visible to me at last across an ocean of heads by lifting

himself on the shoulders of obliging friends, and found our special car

seems mysterious to me as I look back upon it. It really appeared as

though every man, woman, and child in the city _were_ going, from the

highest officials of the State and our leading citizens in various

fields to the veriest street Arab who had managed to beg, borrow, or

earn the requisite fare. Everybody, or nearly everybody, carried a

flag, and Josephine seemed to think that I, as a Harvard man and the

father of the half-back of the team, was lacking in enthusiasm because

I had not got possession of one.

"It will be time enough for enthusiasm when we win the match," I

remarked, sententiously, though what with the general crowd and the

files of students bubbling over with Rah-rah-rahs as they tore along

the platform to find seats in the several trains, I was beginning to

feel very tremulous about the gills, so to speak.

I doubt if Josephine heard my answer. Her attention had suddenly been

absorbed by the sight of Mrs. Willoughby Walton, on the way to her

special car, in all her glory, which consisted of a new seal-brown

costume with tiger-skin trimmings and a retinue comprising Gillespie

Gore, Dr. Henry Meredith, the specialist on nervous diseases (who, like

everybody else, had evidently taken a day off), and half a dozen youths

who looked young enough to be freshmen. She was frantically waving a

crimson flag, which she shook at the windows of our car as she passed

with the spirit of a belle of nineteen.

"That woman is simply wonderful," murmured my darling. "She is

fifty-five if she is a day, but she will not give up."

"Rah! rah! rah! Harvard!" I ejaculated hysterically. I felt that I

was getting rattled, as my famous son calls it.

"Look here, Cousin Fred," said Sam Bangs at my shoulder. "Seen the

morning paper? Here he is cabinet size and a full family history

annexed. It's something which his great-grandchildren will be proud

of. Where the dickens, by the way, is Mrs. Sloane? I've been looking

for her everywhere in the station. She's coming, because she

telephoned me last night to inquire if I could squeeze one more into

our car. We'll be off in another five minutes."

"What _do_ you mean, Sam? What is it?" asked Josephine, as she seized

and held to the light the newspaper which he was extending.

I looked over her shoulder and broke into a cold perspiration at

beholding an execrable three-quarters length cut of my darling son

superscribed by his name in holograph.

"It's an indecent outrage," I hissed.

"It isn't like him in the least. No one would ever know who it was.

It makes him look like a prize-fighter," cried Josephine.

"They've no right to print his picture at all; it'll do the boy a

serious injury by leading him to believe there is nothing else in the

world worth thinking about but foot-ball," I asserted. "What right

have they to do it?"

"Pooh, Cousin Fred," said Sam. "It's nothing but ordinary newspaper

enterprise. They print everybody's portrait nowadays, from the common

murderer up. Your ox is gored this time, that's all. Cheer up, old

man--Rah! rah! rah! Harvard!"

"I never supposed they would make him look like that, or I wouldn't

have let Fred have the photograph to give them," said Josephine,

forlornly.

"Do you mean that you gave it to them?" I asked, in horror.

"It was to Fred I gave it. He said that his picture was to appear with

the others, and that he must have a photograph. But they have made him

much the worst looking of them all. It's a libel on the dear boy."

I was saved from intemperate language by the sudden advent of Mrs. Guy

Sloane, in whose custody appeared the Rev. Bradley Mason, our spiritual

adviser. They were both breathless with haste, occasioned, as we

shortly learned, by the necessity imposed on our beloved pastor of

marrying a couple before he could escape from his fold.

"If I had ever dreamed that you would come, Mr. Mason, I should have

sent you an invitation myself," said Josephine, whose delight, as I

perceived, was tinged with jealousy.

"I planned it as a delirious surprise," interjected Mrs. Sloane. "I

knew you would be only too glad to have him if there was room. I dare

say you thought I was a little mysterious over the telephone last

night, Mr. Bangs," she added with a blithe twist of her neck in Sam's

direction.

"I am a thorough believer in the efficacy of manly sports on

character," I heard Mr. Mason remark to my wife. "They cannot be too

much encouraged by us all."

"It is very kind of you to say so," said Josephine, with a radiance

which told me plainly that her qualms concerning the whole proceeding

as an educational factor were at least temporarily dispelled. "I shall

tell little Fred that you were with us. It will gratify him very much

to know that you saw the game."

"It must be a proud day for you as a father and a college man," he

continued, with a kindly smile in my direction.

"Really, sir, I am not altogether certain yet," I answered, a trifle

doggedly. "My judgment is in a state of suspension."

He obviously mistook my philosophic utterance for fears concerning the

outcome of the game, inasmuch as he presently sought to soothe me by a

speech to the effect that a game well lost was a victory in ethics,

which prompted me to remark, under my breath:

"Provided it doesn't cost a leg or a rib or two."

"Cost nothing," cried the irrepressible Sam, whose ear caught what I

had meant for an aside. "He'll come out of it all right, Cousin Fred.

We're bound to win too. Rah! rah! rah! Harv-a-rd!" Thereupon the

engine gave a puff and a couple of snorts, and we were off.

V

We were early on the ground. That is to say, only a few hundred people

were in their places when we arrived. The seating accommodations were

for thousands. Have you ever seen an intercollegiate foot-ball field?

If not, picture to yourself a long, level, rectangular arena about a

hundred yards long and fifty yards wide marked out with white lines at

certain regular intervals. At either end stands a crossbar supported

by two posts. These are the respective goals. All along the field on

either side runs a tall tier of seats similar to those at a hippodrome,

and there are tiers of seats also opposite the ends; but the best seats

are likely to be those on either side in proximity to the middle of the

field.

Sam Bangs led the way with the confident tread of a drum-major down the

Harvard side--for the custom is to apportion the seats on one of the

long sides of the field among the friends of one college, and those on

the other correspondingly--until he reached a desirable location. Then

we established ourselves according to his directions and waited. It

was rather a long wait--nearly two hours--during which I had ample

leisure to philosophize to the top of my bent. We had to console us

Sam's assurance that it was necessary to take time by the forelock to

this radical extent in order to secure satisfactory places. For the

next two hours a steady stream of people poured along the two sides of

the field until they became great walls of crimson and blue humanity.

Flags waved, badges fluttered, the human voice worked itself hoarse in

every form of encouraging outcry from the full-chested song to the

indiscriminate cat-call. In front of each section of seats stood a

separate youth, who at very short intervals, and at the slightest

provocation, invoked cheers upon cheers for everything and everybody,

from the captain of the team to the college coster-monger. An hour

before the game began the benches were crowded, and I seemed to have

recognized in the passing throng every person of consideration among my

acquaintance. Mrs. Willoughby Walton and her party were among the last

to arrive. I was curious to see where they would bestow themselves,

seeing that we were all packed tight as herrings, and there was only

here and there an occasional chance for another mortal to squeeze in,

and that generally at the cost of clambering over the heads of two or

three hundred people. As Josephine said to me later, I might have

known that Mrs. Walton would not put herself in any such plight. I was

just wondering what on earth her elegant procession, which had halted

in front of the section next to ours, was going to do, when of a sudden

the occupants of the two best rows of seats trooped out in orderly file

and relinquished their places to the fashionable party. Sam, after a

moment's dazed silence, which must have been gall to him, for he does

not like to be imposed upon in such matters, furnished us with the

solution of this act of legerdemain.

They were mill hands subsidized to come early and hold the seats until

Mrs. Willoughby arrived.

Another hour of anticipation, and then at last a roar; a roar which

runs like a fire down our side of the field, waking tired lungs to new

enthusiasm and calling into action every crimson flag and rag. Only

the wearers of the blue are quiet; their benches remain coldly silent.

The Harvard eleven have arrived on a tally-ho, and in a few minutes

more are disporting themselves like a band of prairie dogs over the

campus. The uproar is deafening, but they seem to pay no attention to

it. They strip off their crimson jerseys and concentrate their

energies on bunting and punting a leather foot-ball about the field.

They wear earth-colored canvas jackets and earth-colored knickerbockers

ending in crimson stockings, and I say to myself that they are the most

unpleasant-looking band of ruffians I have ever beheld. Nor are my

fond paternal eyes able to make a reservation in little Fred's favor on

this point. I have considerable difficulty, indeed, in distinguishing

him from his mates, though Josephine declares that she singled him out

the moment he appeared on the scene. He suggests to me a compromise

between a convict and a hod-carrier. Nevertheless, my eyes begin to

water as I follow his every movement, and my pulses throb eagerly. At

the same time I am impelled to link my arm affectionately in my son

David's, next to whom I am sitting. I cannot help wondering what he,

dear boy, is thinking of it all. He is perfectly healthy, but he is

slight, and will never be an athlete. His tastes do not run in that

direction. He graduated at school last summer next to the head of his

class, and it was no class of two, but of twenty times that number. We

were very proud of it, Josephine and I. We went to the exhibition and

saw him receive a number of prizes. It was a pleasant occasion, but

how trifling and insignificant were the plaudits he received compared

with the uproarious ovation accorded a successful half-back. I feel

almost indignant, even in the midst of my excitement over little Fred,

and would fain throw my arms round his brother's neck and whisper that

he must not take the matter to heart, and that the whole business is

terribly unjust.

Now comes another uproar, and this time from the opposite side of the

field. The Yale eleven have arrived and are stripping off their

jerseys. They career over the arena in dirt color and dark blue, while

the dark blue benches surge tumultuously. There is no more delay. The

umpire calls the game, and the two sides line up for action. I feel

Josephine, who is on my other side, clutch my arm and sigh. There is

only one object for her on the field, as I well know. She has been

trying to learn the rules from Sam for the last half hour (she doubts

my knowledge on such subjects nowadays), and I can see that she is

seeking in vain to concentrate her mind on her new-found information

and to shut out the vision of little Fred being borne off the field on

a litter. I confess that Horace Plympton's letter recurs to me for a

moment, but I shake myself and utter an inward "Pooh!" and haughtily

determine to view the contest dispassionately and from the standpoint

of a third person and a philosopher.

Harvard has won the toss and is to have the ball. In my day we had to

kick it; now it is manipulated with the hands, and not forward, but

backward. The players form a phalanx, and one of their number snaps,

as it is called, the ball between his legs to someone behind him, who

in turn passes it to another, who is expected to make a forward dash

with it. Before I can quite realize what is being done the Harvard men

are speeding toward the Yale goal in a V-shaped body. Little Fred has

the ball. Or rather he had it. All I can see now is an indiscriminate

mass of bodies, legs, and arms. A great pile of men are struggling on

the ground, and I have reason to believe that little Fred is at the

bottom of the pile.

"A scrimmage," says Sam, looking round at Josephine.

"Oh, yes," she answers, with apparent calm, but I can feel her tremble.

"This is nothing; it's like this most of the time," says Sam. "You see

he's all right, and----"

A yell cuts him short.

"Good enough! Harvard still has the ball," he continues, at its close.

"Can you see him?" whispers Josephine in my ear.

"He's all right," I murmur, assuringly.

See him! I can see him distinctly. He has lost his cap already; his

hair is in wild confusion; he is covered with dirt from head to foot;

he limps a little. But Harvard still has the ball. And Sam says it is

nothing and like this most of the time. Sam must know.

"Rah! rah! rah! Harvard!" I cry with the rest unflinchingly.

There is a second yell, this time from our enemies. Harvard has lost

the ball and Yale has it. And now before my bewildered eyes scrimmage

follows scrimmage with fierce iteration, and one pile of bodies, arms,

and legs succeeds another. The player, fortunate enough to carry or

force the ball a yard or more toward the rival goal by a frantic rush

before he is overwhelmed and squashed, reaps a whirlwind of applause

from the absorbed multitude. Every inch of ground is disputed. Once

in a long interval when the ball gets dangerously near a goal, someone

on the imperiled side kicks it half the length of the field, and the

scrimmages are renewed. But it is rarely kicked at all except at such

junctures. Foot-ball! I say to myself that it is a gladiatorial

combat with an occasional punt thrown in by way of identification. But

every one around me is declaring that the play of both sides is

magnificent, that the team work is perfection, and the head qualities

displayed unique in the annals of the game. Sam tells me again and

again that Fred is doing sheer wonders and is the backbone of the

Harvard side, and I wonder how he can distinguish so easily which is

Fred and whether he has any backbone left. I can no longer make out

much of anything except that one ruffian closely resembles every other

ruffian, and that one poor boy is lying on the ground perfectly still,

as though he were dead. There is just a little lull on the benches.

People are interested.

"Who is it?" gasps Josephine. "Is it he, dear?"

"Butchered to make a Roman holiday," I mutter between my teeth, with my

heart in my mouth.

They are pulling and rubbing the victim, and a doctor, retained for

such emergencies, is bending over him. After a few moments more he

rises slowly, looks round him in a dazed fashion, and resumes his

position with a painful limp, to a round of applause.

"It isn't Fred," says Josephine.

"But he has a mother, though," I answer.

"He'll be all right in a minute or two," says Sam. "They stamped the

wind out of him, that's all."

To have the wind stamped out of one is a mere bagatelle, of course, and

I have forgotten it in another moment under the spur of excitement. A

Harvard player has the ball, and no one seems to be able to stop him.

He throws off his antagonist and dodges two others, and races down the

field like a deer, while the wearers of the crimson scream his name

with transport and flourish their banners like madmen. It is Fred, it

is Fred, it is Fred! I know his figure now. He has the ball and is

flying like the wind with two great brutes at his heels. Will they

catch him? Will they kill him? They are gaining on him.

"Run--run--run," I shout, in spite of myself, while all the people on

our benches rise in their excitement, and Josephine covers her eyes

with her hands, unwilling to look. On, on my boy runs, until at last

he falls with his two pursuers on top of him full across the Yale line.

"A touch-down, a touch-down!" bursts out Sam, as he grasps my hand in

his wild enthusiasm. I do not know exactly what has occurred except

that there is pandemonium on the Harvard side of the field unequalled

as yet by anything that has happened, and a deathly tranquility along

the benches opposite. After making sure that Fred is still alive, I

listen to the explanation that a touch-down counts a certain number of

points, and gives the right to the side which wins it to try to kick a

goal. This attempt is presently made. A player lies on the ground and

holds the ball between his hands for another to kick. Presto! the

ball sails through the air; for an instant there is agonized suspense,

and then a shout from Yale. It has failed to go between the

goal-posts, and consequently has missed.

"Four to nothing, anyway," says Sam. "That was a magnificent run.

Rah! rah! rah! Harvard."

Josephine is wiping her eyes and everybody in our neighborhood is

nudging each other in consequence of the news that we are blood

relations of the hero of the hour. Mrs. Sloane nods her

congratulations, and Mrs. Walton signals with a crimson flag from the

adjoining section, and our beloved pastor smiles at Josephine in his

delightful way.

And what follows? What follows is fierce and harrowing. What follows

continues to hold that great audience spellbound to the close. The

score is four to nothing in favor of Harvard; but the Yale team,

smarting from defeat, throw themselves into the ever-recurring

scrimmages with set faces. It is not my purpose to follow the contest

in detail. I am writing as a father and philosopher, and not as a

chronicler of athletic struggles. Suffice it to state that the

scrimmages grow still more savage and earnest, and that a player from

each side is obliged by the referee to retire from the field, because

he has slugged an opponent. Suffice it to state that presently a

rusher is obliged to retire from the field by reason of a sprained

ankle. It is not little Fred, but might it not have been? Suffice it

to state that by the end of the first three-quarters of an hour--let

the uninitiated here learn that a match is divided into two bouts of

that length each, with an interim of fifteen minutes--the Yale team, by

the most magnificent work (according to Sam Bangs), has forced the ball

steadily and surely toward the Harvard line, and won a touch-down and

kicked a goal, leaving the score for the first half six to four in

favor of the blue. Just after the ball has flown between the

goal-posts, amid thunders of triumph from our enemies, the umpire calls

time.

Suffice it to state that the second three-quarters of an hour is

largely a repetition of the first--short, furious rushes, everlasting

scrimmages, and here and there a punt. The ruffians look still more

ruffianly from frequent contact with mother-earth and the clutches of

one another. Ominous gloom and depressing silence take possession of

the friends of Harvard; their very cheers are anxious, and with good

reason. Yale has kicked another goal from the field in the first

twenty minutes and the crimson is being gradually and steadily

outplayed. My heart bleeds for my son; he will be so disappointed if

he loses. And I shall be so happy when the game is over and I am sure

that he is not maimed for life. He is doing wonders still, dear boy.

Twice I see him lying flat and motionless on the field with the wind

stamped out of him, to borrow Sam's euphemism, while his mother

wriggles in her seat in the throes of uncertainty and is hardly to be

restrained from going to him. Twice, after the doctor has fumbled over

him and water has been dashed in his face, I see Sam's diagnosis

vindicated, and my half-back rise to his feet, and the game go on as

though nothing had happened. Such episodes are a matter of course, and

not to be taken too seriously. A broken rib or two is not a vital

matter, and only one rib is broken in the second three-quarters of an

hour. Even then the poor victim does not have to be carried off on a

litter, for he is able to walk with the help of the doctor and a

friend. It is not Fred; Fred has merely had the wind stamped out of

him a few times and is still doing wonders. Will it never end? I look

at my watch feverishly. The ball is close by the Harvard goal, and

Yale holds it there with the tenacity of a bull-dog. Bull-dog? They

are all bull-dogs--twenty-two bull-dogs cheek by jowl.

"Isn't it magnificent?" murmurs Sam, looking back at me. "They have

outplayed us fairly and squarely. Only five minutes left, and the

score eleven to four against us. We're not in it. That run of Fred's

was the most brilliant play of the day, though."

"The poor darling will be broken-hearted," whispers Josephine.

"That is better than being broken-headed--better for us," I whisper in

reply.

"I do hope he hasn't lost any of his front teeth. His mouth was

bleeding the last time he fell," continues his mother.

"False ones nowadays are very satisfactory," I answer,

Ten minutes later we are moving along with the rest of our acquaintance

on the way to the railroad. Yale has won, eleven to four, and the

bruised and battered players of both teams have departed on their

respective tally-hos, and Josephine and I are free to receive the

congratulations of our friends with a calm mind, though my darling is

still haunted by the fear that our illustrious son has left a tooth or

two on the arena. Fred's run is on everybody's lips, and we as the

authors of his being are made much of. Mr. Leggatt, the banker, works

his way up to me through the crowd at great personal distress, for he

is a fat man, in order to say, with an enthusiastic shake of the hand:

"Great boy that of yours; splendid grit; I must have him when he

graduates."

I sputter many thanks confusedly. Here is a strange development truly.

I had been hoping, as you may remember, to be able to go to Mr.

Leggatt, at Fred's graduation, and to ask for a clerkship for my boy on

the plea of his steadiness and sterling common sense; and now the

solicitation has come to me on the score of his grit as a foot-ball

kicker. The world seems just a little topsy-turvy, and I am not quite

sure whether to laugh or to cry.

We got home at last somehow; and here I am sitting in my library trying

to collect my faculties and to appreciate the honor which has been

thrust upon me--the honor of being the father of a famous half-back.

To tell the truth, it sticks in my crop just a little and does not

relish to the extent which would seem appropriate. Indeed I am not

altogether sure whether I can see a distinction between being the

father of a famous half-back and the father of a famous toreador or

famous prize-fighter. I know that Leggatt and one or two others, to

whom I ventured to expose my qualms on the way home, declared them

preposterous, and that the game was magnificent discipline for both

mind and body. Come to that, the vicissitudes of a matador are

magnificent discipline for both mind and body. So are those of a

gladiator. Yet I have my doubts whether Leggatt would like to be the

father of either. Nevertheless, although he is a citizen of far

greater consideration than I, he gave me to understand that he would be

proud to be described in the newspapers as the father of a famous

half-back, and to see a son of his handed down to posterity in the

public prints as a prize animal of this description.

I fear there must be a screw loose somewhere in my make-up as a father

and a philosopher. You remember the case of the burglars? It did not

seem to me worth while to go downstairs and expose myself to be shot.

Yet Josephine felt differently on the point.

Moreover, I have never been able to understand why it is courageous or

meritorious to be an amateur Alpine climber, whereas many are fain to

admire the beauties of nature from an elevation where a false step or a

rotten rope would be passports to destruction. Then, again, people who

cross the ocean in dories, or fast for indefinite periods, have never

aroused my enthusiasm. On the contrary, I regard them as being in the

same general category with lunatics. I have never seen a bull-fight,

and I have sometimes fancied that I should be weak enough to attend one

out of curiosity if I happened to be in Spain at the right time; but I

am sure that I should never care to go twice. And yet I am expected to

feel proud and grateful because my eldest son has made prowess at

foot-ball the aim and object of his college course. I am trying to,

trying hard, but I fear it is no use. I should like to understand why

it is glorious or sensible for an honest, strapping fellow, who has

been sent to college by dint of some economy on the part of his

parents, to devote his entire energies to a course of training which

will entitle him to run the risk of having his legs, arms, or ribs

broken in fighting for a leather ball before several thousand people.

Of one thing I am certain already, even at the risk of seeming to agree

with Horace Plympton, which is, that if I had another son with like

proclivities, I should put a stop to it.

But then, as Josephine reminds me, the fact that our David does not

care a picayune for anything of the sort, robs my resolve of much of

its solemnity. I might, to be sure, interpose a mandate at this late

hour and cut off little Fred in the flower of his renown, and (to quote

my wife once more) break his heart; which might be a more serious

consequence than a broken leg. No, I am inclined to think, on the

whole, now that the mischief is done, we may as well let him follow the

path he has chosen, especially as Leggatt has his eye on him and has

promised to give him a start. We must live in the hope that the breath

will not be trampled out of him once too often before that desirable

result is brought to pass. Moreover, if he is borne of the field on a

litter, it will not be in the presence of his parents. We have seen

one gladiatorial combat, and our thirst for gore is sated.

Henceforth we shall be content to cower by the hearth on the days when

the great matches are played and fancy each ring at the door-bell the

summons of a telegraphic emissary. And by way of celebrating our first

escape from bereavement, I am going to present our David with a gold

watch for the excellent showing he made in his studies last summer.