caps--a carpet intricately patterned with the rival colors!
At a signal the mimic battle began. And in a moment occurred the first
casualty--most grave of a series of casualties. A pale hero, with a
useless limb, was led off the field amid loud cheers. Then it was that I
became aware of some dozens of supplementary heroes shivering beneath
brilliant blankets under the lee of the stands. In this species of
football every casualty was foreseen, and the rules allowed it to be
repaired. Not two teams, but two regiments, were, in fact, fighting. And
my European ideal of sport was offended.

Was it possible that a team could be permitted to replace a wounded man
by another, and so on ad infinitum? Was it possible that a team need not
abide by its misfortunes? Well, it was! I did not like this. It seemed
to me that the organizers, forgetting that this was a mimic battle, had
made it into a real battle, and that there was an imperfect appreciation
of what strictly amateur sport is. The desire to win, laudable and
essential in itself, may by excessive indulgence become a morbid
obsession. Surely, I thought, and still think, the means ought to suit
the end! An enthusiast for American organization, I was nevertheless
forced to conclude that here organization is being carried too far,
outraging the sense of proportion and of general fitness. For me, such
organization disclosed even a misapprehension as to the principal aim
and purpose of a university. If ever the fate of the Republic should
depend on the result of football matches, then such organization would
be justifiable, and courses of intellectual study might properly be
suppressed. Until that dread hour I would be inclined to dwell heavily
on the admitted fact that a football match is not Waterloo, but simply a
transient game in which two sets of youngsters bump up against one
another in opposing endeavors to put a bouncing toy on two different
spots of the earth's surface. The ultimate location of the inflated
bauble will not affect the national destiny, and such moral value as the
game has will not be increased but diminished by any enlargement of
organization. After all, if the brains of the world gave themselves
exclusively to football matches, the efficiency of football matches
would be immensely improved--but what then?... I seemed to behold on
this field the American passion for "getting results"--which I admire
very much; but it occurred to me that that passion, with