Give my love to Will and Bess. Tell Will to send my old skates to me. I shall want them. There is fine skating on Fresh Pond, which, by the way, is a lake.
We’re ordered off to bed. I guess some of us won’t sleep very well. I’m rather excited myself, but I guess I’m tired enough to sleep. I’ll write again when I get back to college. With bushels of love to all,
Yours affectionately,
Tom.
III
THE “ARRIVAL”
Jimpson sat on the ground, and watched with breathless interest two charging, tattered, writhing lines of men. [Jimpson felt] a good deal [like an outcast, and looked like a] North American [Indian]. Only legs and face were visible; the rest of Jimpson was enveloped in a big gray blanket with barbaric red borders. Some two dozen counterparts of Jimpson sat or lay near by, stretching along the side-line in front of the Harvard section of the grand stand. Behind them a thousand enthusiastic mortals were shouting pæans to the goddess of victory, and, unless that lady was deaf, she must have heard the pæans, however little she approved of them. The most popular one was sung to a well-known tune:
[Jimpson felt like an outcast, and looked like an Indian.]
“As we’re strolling through Fifth Avenue
With an independent air,
The ladies turn and stare,
The chappies shout, ‘Ah, there!’
And the population cries aloud,
‘Now, aren’t they just the swellest crowd,
The men that broke Old Eli at New Haven!’”