Читать книгу Danforth Plays the Game: Stories for Boys Little and Big онлайн

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As the Norwich Academy game drew near the school rose rapidly toward the zenith of football enthusiasm. Studies suffered, as they always do at such times, and the faculty, made wise by experience, was as lenient as possible. It was less the players and substitutes themselves who made sorry showings in the classrooms than the school at large. It was the non-combatants whose minds refused to mix football with study, to the detriment of study. They not only had to watch and speculate upon the local football situation, but must keep close tab on the progress of the college teams as well. Nearly every preparatory schoolboy is for one reason or another an enthusiastic partisan of one or other of the universities. Usually he has selected his college by the end of his first year at school and from then on, or until he changes his inclination, he follows the fortunes of the football heroes representing his future alma mater with breathless interest. So it can readily be seen that the months of October and November constitute a busy season for the schoolboy, with the interest and excitement drawing to a breathless crisis about the middle of November. Barnstead Academy talked football, read football and dreamed football. It had football for breakfast, dinner and supper, and nibbled on it between meals! City newspapers with accounts of the college and big school gridiron doings were at a premium, while illustrated weeklies, picturing and describing recent contests, were passed around from room to room and read and re-read until torn and tattered.