A proud spectacle for the agitated vision, when the vast business of filling the stands had been accomplished, and the eye ranged over acres of black hats and variegated hats, hats flowered and feathered, and plain male caps—­a carpet intricately patterned with the rival colors!  At a signal the mimic battle began.  And in a moment occurred the first casualty—­most grave of a series of casualties.  A pale hero, with a useless limb, was led off the field amid loud cheers.  Then it was that I became aware of some dozens of supplementary heroes shivering beneath brilliant blankets under the lee of the stands.  In this species of football every casualty was foreseen, and the rules allowed it to be repaired.  Not two teams, but two regiments, were, in fact, fighting.  And my European ideal of sport was offended.

Was it possible that a team could be permitted to replace a wounded man by another, and so on ad infinitum?  Was it possible that a team need not abide by its misfortunes?  Well, it was!  I did not like this.  It seemed to me that the organizers, forgetting that this was a mimic battle, had made it into a real battle, and that there was an imperfect appreciation of what strictly amateur sport is.  The desire to win, laudable and essential in itself, may by excessive indulgence become a morbid obsession.  Surely, I thought, and still think, the means ought to suit the end!  An enthusiast for American organization, I was nevertheless forced to conclude that here organization is being carried too far, outraging the sense of proportion and of general fitness.  For me, such organization disclosed even a misapprehension as to the principal aim and purpose of a university.  If ever the fate of the Republic should depend on the result of football matches, then such organization would be justifiable, and courses of intellectual study might properly be suppressed.  Until that dread hour I would be inclined to dwell heavily on the admitted fact that a football match is not Waterloo, but simply a transient game in which two sets of youngsters bump up against one another in opposing endeavors to put a bouncing toy on two different spots of the earth’s surface.  The ultimate location of the inflated bauble will not affect the national destiny, and such moral value as the game has will not be increased but diminished by any enlargement of organization.  After all, if the brains of the world gave themselves exclusively to football matches, the efficiency of football matches would be immensely improved—­but what then?...  I seemed to behold on this field the American passion for “getting results”—­which I admire very much; but it occurred to me that that passion, with its eyes fixed hungrily on the result it wants, may sometimes fail to see that it is getting a number of other results which it emphatically doesn’t want.

[Illustration:  THE VICTORS LEAVING THE FIELD]