A kindly disposed commissioner of police had instructed his men to be lenient.
"Boys will be boys," he said to the captain on night duty at the Central Station, as he left the office.
"But what about the girls?" inquired the captain with a twinkle in his own eyes that was almost youthful.
"Well—they will be, too—sometimes," the commissioner replied.
In the lobby of the Russell House, where the team was installed, the mayor of Detroit—who himself had been an undergraduate once and remembered it—addressed the throng below him, from the first broad landing of the wide marble stairway.
His rounded periods were cheered to the echo; and when he drily observed that all the policemen had been taken off duty the roof fairly lifted and guests came pouring into the corridors, their faces clearly indicating their alarm.
"You know," the mayor observed, his eyes twinkling,—"we've what they call a slow town here. Well, it rests with you boys, for this night at least, to make it fast. Moreover, it's an old town, a very old town, and wherever you find an absence of paint you have my permission and the permission of the commissioner of police to redecorate. I suppose red would be the proper tint. I have had a fondness for the color ever since I was one of you—an undergrad. at old Ann Arbor——"
In the pandemonium that ensued the mayor judiciously withdrew. The crowd "rushed" the lobby, and staid old men, in town over the day, sought places of greater security on landings, behind pillars, and in corners whence might be had a view of the proceedings without, necessarily, participation.
One by one various members of the team appeared at the head of the stairway and at each appearance a welcome of ringing cheers was sounded. The director of athletics, a little man with a wiry mustache and a square chin addressed the crowd from the top step after prolonged cries of "Speech! Speech!"