Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1891-12-03

/
packed, and there is no more rollieking
or prosperous day at the theaters.
***
An inter collegiate foot ball game
brings some eight or ten thousand college
men to town. y crowd of this size COM
posed of any other class of persons would
never be noted. 1t would be swallowed
up in the general vastness of Gotham,
losing its features and form. But Goth
am cannot swallow up such crowd of
college boys. Something about them
keeps up their individuality. They car
ry with them the atmosphere of Olympus.
They have all the divine impunity of the
gods, while their young freshness, energy
and beauty palliate all their outrages.
They are outrageous, too. Only a few
days ago | saw mob of thirty or forty
of them coming up broadway, with vo-
ciferous shouting and footing of horns
They swept along stopping everything
and raising very deuce of an uproar
and din, but only some churlish bystand-
er, like myself, grum5led, and asked
where the police were? The police them
selves smiled at the boys, and so did the
world, although there was no reason for
the noise they were making, except their
own exuberant spirits.
On Thanksgiving day they take the
town. They are given the-city. There
is no presentation speech, but custom
presents them with the keys and seal.
After the game they raise the very Cain.
Yet whoever heard of one of them being
arrested? They swarm in the hotel cor
ridors; they go up and down the streets
whooping and shouting. They go in an
tagonistic bodies to the play, and at
tempting to yell one another down, they
effectually yell down the players. They
consume untold quantities of red wine,
becoming merry, sublime and quarrel
some But no one complains.
There is so much of possibility in the
young man at college. He is not taken
exactly seriously He seems to be not
yet fully responsible. We think of
a man that he has, figuratively speak
ing, 'shot his wad," and we can fig
ure him up and hold him accountable.
Or a young business mamie too is of our
world of laws and order and amenable to
them. But the college boy is not. What
does he know of social restrictions? He
cares nothing for society's metes and
bounds but to trangress them. Their
minds are more or less up Parnassus. 1t
is the theoretical time with them, when
all their mental and physical faculties are
aboil They do dissipate, but not to
merely sensuaIly gratify passion and ap-
petite. Appetites are usually formed by
habit and they have not yet acquired
them. They minge in the vilest vile
ness out of theory. They think purity
narrow, and they abhor bigotry, for they
are always the moderns of the moderns
aud the liberals of the liberals. Though |
they wallow in filth they Are not contain
mated, for they are never mean or base,
cowardIy or dishonest, and they are us
unselfish and as sself-sacriicing as an apos
tie. They are more audaciously familiar
with the Deity, perhaps because they are
new from His hand. They wade in slime
without stain of soul, for their souls are
aloft, and only their bodies are below.
For these reasons we indulgently smile
at the unheard-Of acts of our college boys,
and accord them the freedom of the city
more absolutely than the smallest col
lege town.
*%*
There is restaurant uptown which it
is not safe to beat. AS took my frugal
supper there few evenings ago, large
and determined looking man entered,
and asked the waiter for steak, swell
Done" There are many such gastronom
ic idiots as he in the world, whose vita
ted taste and cast-iron stomach demand
that a big, thick, sweet, juicy porter
house shall be thinned down half way
and cooked and cooked to stony hard
ness and dryness, with all its flavor gone
away in vaper and its juices burned up.
The waiter brought in rich, soft piece
of meat with a savory crisp all over it.
The well done man cut into it, and snort
ed as he saw some red in the center. He