However, they made a very good showing against the Juniors on Tuesday, and by Thursday they had improved so much that they beat the lazy Seniors. To tell the truth the latter had not put a very ambitious team in the field, and played horse throughout the game. But this encouraged the Freshmen wonderfully, and confidence was just what they needed. After the practice on Friday afternoon the Junior coach said, "I think you fellows will win to-morrow—if you don't get rattled," he added, shaking his head and thinking of his own Freshman year.
The Sophomore-Freshman game is the concluding match of the week, and is always the special event of the series, owing to the intense rivalry between the two lower classes. It is advertised in the bill-posters in letters twice as large as the other games, and many alumni gather from New York and Philadelphia to witness it, which makes the two lower classes feel quite important.
Great was the excitement in the Freshman class, and great was the hope of victory. The Sophomores, though they did not show it, were also excited, but they were blatantly confident of winning. It would be a terrible disgrace if they lost to the Freshmen.
Soon after the mid-day meal on Saturday the Freshman class marched down to University Field in a body, and sat there cheering for itself and its team all the afternoon.
Just before the game began the Sophomores, in a solid mass of orange and black, making a deafening lot of noise with college songs on kazoos, led by a big brass band, entered the field with banners waving, took possession of a solid section of the bleachers, derided the Freshmen, drowned out their cheers, guyed their batters, rattled their pitcher, and won the game by a score of 18 to 7. That night the country for miles round was scoured by faithful Freshmen. Not a proclamation was found.
The next night still a larger number of Freshmen lost half of their eight hours' sleep in the cause, and in vain.
The next afternoon Lucky Lee whispered to Young, coming out of mathematics: "The Sophomores get out their procs to-night, sure; they are being printed in Trenton—I have a detective down there who found out all about it. I want you to come up to my room in University Hall this evening after you have finished your 'poling'—I mean studying. Wear your old clothes. You'll come, won't you?"
Young had not been engaged in the previous nightly searches, and he had not intended to join in this one. But it was Lee. "I'll come," said Young—"soon's I get through 'poling,'" he added, for he wanted young Lee to know that he too understood college slang, even though he was a quiet Freshman. There was something fascinating to Young about that bright-faced little fellow. Everybody liked him.
The territory to be covered and the men to cover it had been divided up beforehand among a number of leaders, and when Lee had said, in talking it over in Powelton's room, "I'm going to get that man Young, he's a big, strong fellow," Powelton had said, "What, that big, awkward poler from the backwoods?—the man everybody guys? Bah! he hasn't any more class spirit than my pipe."
Everyone at college is called a student, but a poler is one who studies to excess.