There is no such spirit in the school today. They have a football eleven, it is true, and it holds its head well up among its mates; a little above 'em, too, most of the time; the old school's the old school yet, I tell 'em; but, after all, it isn't the old game, nor the old spirit. I go out sometimes to watch them, and think: "Well, it's a queer game they play now, and call football!" They trot out in such astonishing toggery; padded and guarded from shin to crown—welted, belted, strapped, and buckled beyond recognition. And there's no independence in the play; every move has to be told 'em. It's as if they weren't big enough to run alone; and so they hire a big stepmother of a university "coach," who stands around in a red sweater, and yells, and berates them. Not a man answers back; he doesn't dare to. They don't dare eat plain, Christian food, but have a "training table," and diet like invalids. I've seen 'em at a game not dare to take a plain drink of water; when they got thirsty they sucked at a wet sponge, like babes at the bottle!
It was not so in our day. No apron strings of a university coach were tied to us. We were free-born men. When we wanted to play we got together and went down to the old pasture, to the big oak tree that stood near the middle of it; and there we would "choose up," and take off our coats and vests and neckgear, and pile them round the oak, and walk out on the field and go at it—everybody—not a pitiful dozen or so, while the rest stood with their hands in their pockets and looked on—but everybody! And it was football: no playing half an hour without seeing the ball in the air once; we kicked it all the time—except when we missed it, and then we kicked the other fellow's shins! And when we got thirsty we went down to the spring and took an honest drink out of an honest tin cup.
And what a fine, free, open game it was—the old game! What art you could put into its punting, and running, and dodging, and creeping, and drop-kicking! And what a glorious tumult in the old-fashioned scrimmage, especially the scrimmages in the old ditch. It was a rather broad and shallow ditch, and into it the ball would often roll, a dozen excited fellows dashing after it; and there in the ditch bottom, in mad mêlee, frantic foot to foot, naked shin against sole leather, we would fight to drive the ball through the opposing mob. There might the rustic Normalite, with implacable cowhides, the bigger now the better, sweeten his humiliation with revenge, and well I remember the fearful devastation he sometimes wrought among our Academic shins!
But we were used to that. Indeed, we youngsters gloried in it. It was a spot upon your honor not to have a spot upon your shin. We compared them as soldiers brag of their wounds in battle, and he who could exhibit the largest and most lurid specimen was the best man. Those discolored patches were our "V. C.'s" and "Crosses of the Legion of Honor"; seals attesting our spirit, stamped with a stamp of good, stiff sole leather, painfully enough, it was true, but who cared for that? We were only sorry we could not exhibit them in public. To be obliged to carry such decorations under your trouser leg was hard.
Football Night at the "Lincolnian Literary," and Laury Thompson's speech there I must tell about. If any of the old boys ever read this—and it is for them I am writing it—they will wonder if I leave that out. For it marked an epoch in the Normal preparation for the game. And coming from Laury Thompson it was so unexpected. He always looked so cheerful in his high-water pants. His clothes were such a harmonious misfit. And he got off his absurdities with such a grave, humorous-innocent face; only the veiled twinkling in the eyes to show that it was not the most solemn matter in the world.
He "wore his pants high-water a-purpose," he told us; "had 'em made so for hot weather; coolin', ye know; refreshin'; lets the air in; breeze of heaven playin' up and down your pant-leg." And when one of the boys cracked some joke on his big shoes, he gravely remonstrated, assuring us that he "had those shoes made sort of in memoriam; hide of a heifer calf of his'n that got killed by the cars: a rosebud of a little critter; he kind o' wanted something to remember her by; tarnation good leather, too." He had "writ a poem" on that calf, he said, but refused to recite it; "felt delikit about exposin' his feelin's."
The old Lincolnian Literary Society is dead now, and its room has been turned into a shop for the Manual Training Department. It is a long, narrow room on the third floor, and was crowded that night to the very door. The meeting, called "to rouse public spirit in the matter of the coming game," grew spirited and hilarious as the speaking proceeded, and when Thompson was called on, and his tall, odd figure rose up in the midst, there was great thundering of boots along the floor.
"Boys," he began, "our Academic friends, raised, most of 'em, in this proud metropolis, seem to 'a' got the notion that because we haven't just stepped out of a fashion plate we can't play football. They tell us to 'thrash the hayseed out of our hair,' and to 'slack off on our galluses, and see if we can't get some o' that high-water out of our pants;' they've been 'tryin' to figure out our combined acreage o' boot leather,' they say, 'and had to give it up; Arabic notation wa'n't equal to it.'