You see he was a hero to these boys. You and I know that he was made of flesh and blood, and weakness and strength, like the rest of us.
CHAPTER IX
A QUESTION OF MONEY
The great Yale-Princeton football game, which took place during the Thanksgiving holidays in New York, was now a matter of history—and of rejoicing, to one side. But as all those interested in football know which side won the championship that year, it is not necessary to recount the game and rub it into the losers.
Everyone, almost, had gone to see the great contest and to cheer for the team, and Princeton seemed as deserted as in mid-summer. The Invincibles secured a huge four-in-hand coach and were half frozen driving up Fifth Avenue to the game; but they had the privilege, granted to Freshmen on such occasions only, of wearing the sacred orange and black—yards of it, hung all over their hats, their clothes, the coach, the driver, and the horses. They cheered themselves voiceless, and had a time they were never to forget.
The Freshman team had played the Columbia University Freshmen in the morning, and had no difficulty in defeating them by a large score. Right Guard Young put up a very fair, steady game, the critics said, but had no chance to make any brilliant play, as he had hoped.
But the Deacon felt very big and important when his exultant classmates ran out at the close of the game and carried him and the rest of the eleven off the field on their shoulders, cheering for each player by name.
He felt less important in the afternoon, when the great contest, the event of the day, took place; he wondered if many of those flocking in realized that he was Right Guard Young of the Freshman team; again he feared that he looked like the big green farmer that he did not want people to think he was.
The enormous grand-stands and bleachers, and the coaches and carriages, and even the neighboring houses were jammed with thousands and thousands of eager human beings, wearing violets or chrysanthemums; and some of the old grads had come from as far as the Pacific coast to see this manly match, which was to decide the championship of the two best football teams in the western hemisphere. Young had never before seen so many people at once—"more than the population of the whole county you're in," he wrote to his brother Charlie—and never before had he been so thrilled as when long Jack Stehman made his famous tackle after that Yale half-back had dodged past all the rest of the Princeton team.... But the game and its noise and victory and defeat were all over now, and the two universities had returned to go on where each had left off before Thanksgiving.