Stover had never been on the Yale field except through the multitudinous paths of his imagination. Huddled in the car crowded with candidates, he waited the first glimpse as Columbus questioned the sky or De Soto sought the sea. Three cars, filled with veterans and upper classmen, were ahead of him. He was among a score of sophomores, members of third and fourth squads, and a few of his own class with prep school reputations who sat silently, nervously overhauling their suits, adjusting buckles and shoe-laces, swollen to grotesque proportions under knotted sweaters and padded jerseys.
The trolley swung over a short bridge, and, climbing a hill, came to a slow stop. In an instant he was out, sweeping on at a dog-trot in the midst of the undulating, brawny pack. In front—a thing of air and wood—rose the climbing network of empty stands. Then, as they swept underneath, the field lay waiting, and at the end two thin, straight lines and a cross-bar. No longer were the stands empty or the breeze devoid of song and cheers. The goal was his—the goal of Yale—and, underfoot at last, the field more real to him than Waterloo or Gettysburg!
He camped down, one among a hundred, oblivious of his companions, hands locked over his knees, his glance strained down the field to where, against the blue sweater of a veteran, a magic Y was shining white. For a moment he felt a plunging despair—he was but one among so many. The whole country seemed congregated there in competition. Others seemed to overtop him, to be built of bone and muscle beyond his strength. He felt a desire to shrink back and steal away unperceived, as he had that awful moment when, on his first test at school, he had been told that he must stand up and fill the place of a better man.
Then he was on his feet, in obedience to a shouted command, journeying up the field to where beyond the stands a tackling dummy on loose pulleys swung like a great scarecrow.
"Here, now, get some action into this," said a fiery little coach, Tompkins, quarter-back a dozen seasons before. "Line up. Get some snap to it. First man. Hard—hit it hard!"
The first three—heavy linesmen, still soft and short of breath—made lumbering, slipping attempts.
Tompkins was in a blaze of fury.
"Hold up! What do you think this is? I didn't ask you to hug your grandmother; I told you to tackle that dummy! Hit it hard—break it in two! If you can't tackle, we don't want you around. Tackle to throw your man back! Tackle as if the whole game depended on it. Come on, now. Next man. Jump at it! Rotten! Rotten! Oh, squeeze it. Don't try to butt it over—you're not a goat! Half the game's the tackling! Next man. Oh, girls—girls! What is this bunch, anyhow—a young ladies' seminary? Here! Stop—stop! You're up at Yale now. I'll show you how we tackle!"
Heedless of his street clothes, of the grotesqueness of the thing, of all else but the savage spark he was trying to communicate, he went rushing into the dummy with a headlong plunge that shook the ropes.
He was up in a moment, forgetting the dust that clung to him, shouting in his shrill voice: