Methinks I feel this youth's perfections,
With an invisible and subtle stealth,
To creep in at mine eyes.--Shakespeare.
It had come at last, the day of days, for the two great American
universities; Harvard and Yale were going to play their annual game of
football and the railroad station of Springfield, Mass., momentarily
became more and more thronged with eager partisans of both sides of the
great athletic contest.
All the morning trains from New York, New Haven, Boston and the smaller
towns had been pouring their loads into Springfield. Hampden Park was
a sea of eager faces. The weather was fine and the waiting for the
football game only added to the enjoyment--the appetizer before the
feast.
The north side of the park was a crimson dotted mass full ten thousand
strong; the south side showed the same goodly number blue-bespeckled,
and equally confident. Little ripples of applause woke along the banks
as the familiar faces of old "grads" loomed up, then melted into the
vast throng. These, too, were men of international reputation who had
won their spurs in the great battles of life, and yet, who came back
year after year, to assist by applause in these mimic battles of their
Alma Mater.
But the real inspiration to the contestants, were the softer, sweeter
faces scattered among the more rugged ones like flowers growing among
the grain--the smiles, the mantling glow of round young cheeks, the
clapping of little hands--these were the things that made broken
collarbones, scratched faces, and bruised limbs but so many honors to
be contended for, votive offerings to be laid at the little feet of
these fair ones.
Mrs. Standish Tremont's party occupied, as usual, a prominent place on
the Harvard side. She was so great a factor in the social life at
Cambridge that no function could have been a complete success without
the stimulus of her presence. Personally, Mrs. Standish Tremont was
one of those women who never grow old; one would no more have thought
of hazarding a guess about her age than one would have made a similar
calculation about the Goddess of Liberty. She was perennially young,
perennially good-looking, and her entertainments were above reproach.
Some sour old "Grannies" in Boston, who had neither her wit, nor her
health, called her Venus Anno Domino, but they were jealous and cynical
and their testimony cannot be taken as reliable.
What if she had been splitting gloves applauding college games since
the fathers of to-day's contestants had fought and struggled for
similar honors in this very field. She applauded with such vim, and
she gave such delightful dinners afterward, that for the glory of old
Harvard it is to be hoped she will continue to applaud and entertain
the grandsons of to-day's victors, even as she had their sires.