Violets and Other Tales | Page 5

gracefully
into his manly embrace, throw her arms as lovingly around his neck,
and cuddle as warmly and sweetly to his bosom as her little sister who

has done nothing else but think, dream, and practice for that hour. It
comes natural, you see.

TEN MINUTES' MUSING.
There was a terrible noise in the school-yard at intermission; peeping
out the windows the boys could be seen huddled in an immense bunch,
in the middle of the yard. It looked like a fight, a mob, a
knock-down,--anything, so we rushed out to the door hastily, fearfully,
ready to scold, punish, console, frown, bind up broken heads or drag
wounded forms from the melee as the case might be. Nearly every boy
in the school was in that seething, swarming mass, and those who
weren't were standing around on the edges, screaming and throwing up
their hats in hilarious excitement. It was a mob, a fearful mob, but a
mob apparently with a vigorous and well-defined purpose. It was a mob
that screamed and howled, and kicked, and yelled, and shouted, and
perspired, and squirmed, and wriggled, and pushed, and threatened, and
poured itself all seemingly upon some central object. It was a mob that
had an aim, that was determined to accomplish that aim, even though
the whole azure expanse of sky fell upon them. It was a mob with set
muscles, straining like whip-cords, eyes on that central object and with
heads inward and sturdy legs outward, like prairie horses reversed in a
battle. The cheerers and hat throwers on the outside were mirthful, but
the mob was not; it howled, but howled without any cachinnation; it
struggled for mastery. Some fell and were trampled over, some weaker
ones were even tossed in the air, but the mob never deigned to trouble
itself about such trivialities. It was an interesting, nervous whole, with
divers parts of separate vitality.
In alarm I looked about for the principal. He was standing at a safe
distance with his hands in his pockets watching the seething mass with
a broad smile. At sight of my perplexed expression some one was about
to venture an explanation, when there was a wild yell, a sudden
vehement disintegration of the mass, a mighty rush and clutch at a dark
object bobbing in the air--and the mist cleared from my intellect--as I
realized it all--football.

Did you ever stop to see the analogy between a game of football and
the interesting little game called life which we play every day? There is
one, far-fetched as it may seem, though, for that matter, life's game,
being one of desperate chances and strategic moves, is analogous to
anything.
But, if we could get out of ourselves and soar above the world, far
enough to view the mass beneath in its daily struggles, and near enough
the hearts of the people to feel the throbs beneath their boldly carried
exteriors, the whole would seem naught but such a maddening rush and
senseless-looking crushing. "We are but children of a larger growth"
after all, and our ceaseless pursuing after the baubles of this earth are
but the struggles for precedence in the business play-ground.
The football is money. See how the mass rushes after it! Everyone so
intent upon his pursuit until all else dwindles into a ridiculous nonentity.
The weaker ones go down in the mad pursuit, and are unmercifully
trampled upon, but no matter, what is the difference if the foremost win
the coveted prize and carry it off. See the big boy in front, he with iron
grip, and determined, compressed lips? That boy is a type of the big,
merciless man, the Gradgrind of the latter century. His face is set
towards the ball, and even though he may crush a dozen small boys,
he'll make his way through the mob and come out triumphant. And he'll
be the victor longer than anyone else, in spite of the envy and fighting
and pushing about him.
To an observer, alike unintelligent about the rules of a football game,
and the conditions which govern the barter and exchange and
fluctuations of the world's money market, there is as much difference
between the sight of a mass of boys on a play-ground losing their
equilibrium over a spheroid of rubber and a mass of men losing their
coolness and temper and mental and nervous balance on change as
there is between a pine sapling and a mighty forest king--merely a
difference of age. The mighty, seething, intensely concentrated mass in
its emphatic tendency to one point is the same, in the utter disregard of
mental and physical welfare. The momentary triumphs of transitory
possessions impress a casual looker-on with the same fearful idea--that

the human race, after all, is savage to the core,