ut a soft spot
to fall on. It's got to stop. You're going to hold on to that ball this
half and take it places. If some little fellow from Normal crosses his
fingers and says 'naughty, naughty,' don't fall on the ball and yell
'down' until they can hear it uptown. Thirty points is what I want out
of you this half, and if you don't get 'em--well, you just dare to come
back here without them, that's all. Now get out on that field and jostle
somebody. Git!"

Did we git? Well, rather. We were so mad our clothes smoked. We would
have quit the game right there and resigned from the team, but we didn't
dare to. Bost would have talked to us some more. And we didn't dare not
to make those thirty points, either. It was an awful tough job, but we
did it with a couple over. We raged like wild beasts. We scared those
gentle Normalites out of their boots. I can't imagine how we ever got it
into our heads that they could play football, anyway. When it was all
over we went back to the gymnasium feeling righteously triumphant, and
had another hour with Bost in which he took us all apart without
anaesthetics, and showed us how Nature would have done a better job if
she had used a better grade of lumber in our composition.

That day made the Siwash team. The school went wild over the score. Bost
rounded up two or three more good players, and every afternoon he
lashed us around the field with that wire-edged tongue of his. On
Saturdays we played, and oh, how we worked! In the first half we were
afraid of what Bost would say to us when we came off the field. In the
second half we were mad at what he had said. And how he did drive us
down the field in practice! I can remember whole cross sections of his
talk yet:

"Faster, faster, you scows. Line up. Quick! Johnson, are you waiting for
a stone-mason to set you? Snap the ball. Tear into them. Low! Low! Hi-i!
You end, do you think you're the quarter pole in a horse race? Nine men
went past you that time. If you can't touch 'em drop 'em a souvenir
card. Line up. Faster, faster! Oh, thunder, hurry up! If you ran a
funeral, center, the corpse would spoil on your hands. Wow! Fumble! Drop
on that ball. Drop on it! Hogboom, you'd fumble a loving-cup. Use your
hand instead of your jaw to catch that ball. It isn't good to eat.
That's four chances you've had. I could lose two games a day if I had
you all the time. Now try that signal again--low, you linemen; there's
no girls watching you. Snap it; s