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.




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