CHAPTER X.
Football.
Why there should be such excitement about a game of football I have never been able to find out. When all is said and done you can hardly see the players. They are bunched together most of the time. They stand bent over, looking for all the world as though they were about to play leapfrog.
Then some under-sized little shrimp of a fellow begins to yell 4-11-44, 7-28-7-11, and all manner of numbers; he grows fearfully excited over the stupidity of his team; they evidently don't understand the signals.
In a perfect frenzy of passion and despair he raises his voice and almost weeps. Sometimes he says things that are not in the polite letter writer; not the things that a gentle youth would send in a letter to his best girl, but the rest of the team don't seem to mind it at all. The other side is doing the same. They have also a man whose special mission in life seems to be howling with all his might while madly springing up and down.
Again they form and await the whistle of the umpire. Every man acts as though the eyes of the entire sporting world were upon him.
Gee! If they can only get the start; what they won't do to the other side! The whistle blows, one yard gained after a terrific struggle; form again, more numbers yelled in a voice hoarse from much shouting, then they are off again! A splendid kick causing the ball to form a perfect curve as it sails through the air, one great big chap fairly springs up several feet to catch it as it comes down; he runs, and his side, when the whistle blows, have gained five yards. I stand idly watching them, wishing that the game was more familiar to me. It must be a good game, after all is said and done, or people would not go wild about it.
The first half is over. Now the umpire is quite a busy man. Let us trust he has taken out a traveling life insurance policy, for he certainly needs it as he wanders up and down. Each side is filing its protests. If he is to believe them they have each been guilty of everything but piracy on the high seas.