y 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 th