Yet, do you suppose that President Wilson or any official was the hero of the day?
We are as loyal a Democrat as anybody else, but NO.
Or do you fancy that the former belle of Wytheville, Va., who is within the month to be the First Lady of the Land, was the person toward whom all eyes were directed during most of the afternoon?
There were considerable numbers of field glasses focused upon the white furs and the lavender orchids and winsome smile. But again the reply is emphatically NO.
The leading character, the person who ought to figure away up in the top of the headlines, the one whose name was spoken more frequently than any other, was a rough, rugged, short, stocky, right half-back named Elmer Oliphant, who, according to Army statistics, is twenty-two years old, stands 5 feet 7 inches in altitude, weighs 163 pounds, and hails from Indiana.
Ollie was the boy. Before the first period of the game was more than half over, there was a fumble by a Navy back and an Army man fell upon the ball only eight yards away from the goal line of the midshipmen.
There was the crash of an Army back against the Navy line, and just a little weakening. There was another impact of a cadet against a wall that was almost but not quite solid. There remained about two or three yards to go.
Ollie was hurled in. He took the ball, sought coolly for the weakest spot he might find in a line that was almost impregnable at the moment, and then, instantly finding what he wanted, twisted his way backward through left tackle and fell across the chalk mark for a touchdown.
The way the rest of the Army boys sank their fists into Ollie's broad back when he got up, you'd have thought he'd be in no shape for any other position than lying flat upon a stretcher. But he came calmly away from the tumult of congratulation, and as soon as he could kick the mud from between his shoe-cleats he booted the ball over the cross-bar for a goal.
Throughout the rest of that period, and throughout all the next, we may skip Ollie. All he did was run around ends for distances varying from five to twenty yards, and plunge through the Annapolis line with from two to four men attached to his neck, arms, legs and back, and tear up, despite these handicaps, more earth than one of those tractor ploughs the Flivver Man is going to put on the market after he settles the European war.