Football,” said Big Joe, the friendly waiter, laying down the sporting page of my paper with a reminiscent sigh, “ain't what it was twenty years ago. When I played the game it was some different from wood-tag and pump-pump-pull-away. It's went to the dogs.”

“Used to be a star, huh?” said I. “What college did you play with, Joe?”

“No college,” said Joe, “can claim me for its alma meter.”

He seated himself comfortably across the table from me, as the more sociably inclined waiters will do in that particular place. “I don't know that I ever was a star. But I had the punch, and I was as tough as that piece of cow you're trying to stick your fork into. And I played in one game the like of which has never been pulled off before or since.”

“Tell me about it,” said I, handing him a cigar. Joe sniffed and tasted it suspiciously, and having made sure that it wasn't any brand sold on the premises, lighted it. There was only one other customer, and it was near closing time.

“No, sir,” he said, “it wasn't any kissing game in my day. Ever hear of a place called Kingstown, Illinois? Well, some has and some hasn't. It's a burg of about five thousand souls and it's on the Burlington. Along about the time of the Spanish war it turned out a football team that used to eat all them little colleges through there alive.

“The way I joined was right unexpected to me. I happened into the place on a freight train, looking for a job, and got pinched for a hobo. When they started to take me to the lock-up I licked the chief of police and the first deputy chief of police, and the second deputy, but the other member of the force made four, and four was too many for me. I hadn't been incarcerated ten minutes before a pleasant looking young fellow who had seen the rumpus comes up to the cell door with the chief, and says through the bars:

“'How much do you weigh?'

“'Enough,' says I, still feeling sore, 'to lick six longhaired dudes like you.'

“'Mebby,' says he, very amiable, 'mebby you do. And if you do, I've got a job for you.'

“He was so nice about it that he made me ashamed of my grouch...

“'No offence meant,' says I. 'I only weigh 230 pounds now. But when I'm getting the eats regular I soon muscles up to 250 stripped.'

“'I guess you'll do,' says he, 'judging by the fight you put up. We need strength and carelessness in the line.'

“'What line is that?' says I, suspicious.

“'From now on,' says he, 'you're right tackle on the Kingstown Football Team. I'm going to get you a job with a friend of mine that runs a livery stable, but your main duty will be playing football. Are you on?'

“'Lead me to the training table,”' says I. And he paid me loose and done it.

“This fellow was Jimmy Dolan, and he had once played an end on Yale, and couldn't forget it. He and a couple of others that had been off to colleges had started the Kingstown Team. One was an old Michigan star, and the other had been a half-back at Cornell. The rest of us wasn't college men at all, but as I remarked before, we were there with the punch.

“There was Tom Sharp, for instance. Tom was thought out and planned and preforedestinated for a centre rush by Nature long before mankind ever discovered football. Tom was about seventeen hands high, and his style of architecture was mostly round about. I've seen many taller men, but none more circumferous as to width and thickness. Tom's chest was the size and shape of a barrel of railroad spikes, but a good deal harder. You couldn't knock him off his feet, but if you could have, it wouldn't have done you any good, for he was just as high one way as he was another—and none of it idle fat. Tom was a blacksmith during his leisure hours, and every horse and mule for miles around knowed him and trembled at his name. He had never got hold of nothing yet that was solid enough to show him how strong he was.

“But the best player was a big teamster by the name of Jerry Coakley. Jerry was between six and eight feet high, and to the naked eye he was seemingly all bone. He weighed in at 260 pounds ad valorem, and he was the only long bony man like that I ever seen who could get himself together and start quick. Tom Sharp would roll down the field calm and thoughtful and philosophic, with the enemy clinging to him and dripping off of him and crumpling up under him, with no haste and no temper, like an absent-minded battleship coming up the bay; but this here Jerry Coakley was sudden and nefarious and red-headed like a train-wreck. And the more nefarious he was, the more he grinned and chuckled to himself. 'For two years that team had been making a reputation for itself, and all the pride and affection and patriotism in the town was centred on to it. I joined on early in the season, but already the talk was about the Thanksgiving game with Lincoln College. This Lincoln College was a right sizable school. Kingstown had licked it the year before, and there were many complaints of rough play on both sides. But this year Lincoln had a corking team. They had beat the state university, and early in the season they had played Chicago off her feet, and they were simply yearning to wipe out the last year's disgrace by devastating the Kingstown Athletic Association, which is what we called ourselves. And in the meantime both sides goes along feeding themselves on small-sized colleges and athletic associations, hearing more and more about each other, and getting hungrier and hungrier.

“Things looked mighty good for us up to about a week before Thanksgiving. Then one day Jerry Coakley turned up missing. We put in 48 hours hunting him, and at the end of that time there was a meeting of the whole chivalry and citizenry of Kingstown in the opery hall to consider ways and means of facing the public calamity. For the whole town was stirred up. The mayor himself makes a speech, which is printed in full in the Kingstown Record the next day along with a piece that says: 'Whither are we drifting?'

“Next day, after practice, Jimmy Dolan is looking pretty blue.

“'Cheer up,' says I, 'Jerry wasn't the whole team.'

“'He was about a fifth of it,' says Captain Dolan, very sober.

“'But the worst was yet to come. The very next day, at practice, a big Swede butcher by the name of Lars Olsen, who played right guard, managed to break his ankle. This here indignity hit the town so hard that it looked for a while like Lars would be mobbed. Some says Lars has sold out to the enemy and broke it on purpose, and the Kingstown Record has another piece headed: 'Have we a serpent in our midst?'

“That night Dolan puts the team in charge of Berty Jones, the Cornell man, with orders to take no risks on anything more injurious than signal practice, and leaves town. He gets back on Wednesday night, and two guys with him. They are hustled from the train to a cab and from the cab to the American House, and into their rooms, so fast no one gets a square look at them.

“But after dinner, which both of the strangers takes in their rooms, Dolan says to come up to Mr. Breittmann's room and get acquainted with him, which the team done. This here Breittmann is a kind of Austro-Hungarian Dutchman looking sort of a great big feller, with a foreign cast of face, like he might be a German baron or a Switzer waiter, and he speaks his language with an accent. Mr. Rooney, which is the other one's name, ain't mentioned at first. But after we talk with the Breittmann person a while Jimmy Dolan says:

“'Boys, Mr. Rooney has asked to be excused from meeting any one to-night, but you'll all have an opportunity to meet him to-morrow—after the game.'

“'But,' says I, 'Cap, won't he go through signal practice with us?'

“Dolan and Breittmann, and Berty Jones, who was our quarterback and the only one in the crowd besides Dolan who had met Mr. Rooney, looked at each other and kind of grinned. Then Dolan says: 'Mr. Breittmann knows signals and will run through practice with us in the morning, but not Mr. Rooney. Mr. Breittmann, boys, used to be on the Yale scrub.'

“'Dem vas goot days, Chimmie,' says this here Breittmann, 'but der naturalist, Chimmie, he is also the good days. What?'

“The next day, just before the game, I got my first glimpse of this Rooney when he come downstairs with Breittmann and they both piled into a cab. He wore a long overcoat over his football togs, and he had so many headpieces and nose guards and things on to him all you could see of his face was a bit of reddish looking whisker at the sides.

“'He's Irish by the name,' says 1, 'and the way he carries them shoulders and swings his arms he must have learned to play football by carrying the hod.' He wasn't a big man, neither, and I thought he handled himself kind of clumsy.

“When we got out to the football field and that Lincoln College bunch jumped out of their bus and began to pass the ball around, the very first man we see is that there Jerry Coakley.

“Yes, sir, sold out!

“Dolan and me ran over to the Lincoln captain.

“'You don't play that man!' says Dolan, mad as a hornet, pointing at Jerry. Jerry, he stood with his arms crossed, grinning and chuckling to himself, bold as Abraham Lincoln on the burning deck and built much the same.

“'Why not?' says the college captain, 'he's one of our students.'

“'Him?' says I. 'Why, he's the village truck-driver here!' And that there Jerry had the nerve to wink at me.

“'Mr. Coakley matriculated at Lincoln College a week ago,' says the captain, Jerry he grinned more and more, and both teams had gathered into a bunch around us.

“'Matriculated? Jerry did?' says Jimmy Dolan. 'Why, it's all Jerry can do to write his name.'

“'Mr. Coakley is studying the plastic arts, and taking a special course in psychology,' says the captain.

“'Let him play, Dolan,' says Tom Sharp. 'Leave him to me. I'll learn him some art. I'll fix him!'

“'O, you Tom!' says Jerry, grinning good-natured.

“'O, you crook!' says Tom. And Jerry, still grinning good-natured, hands Tom one. It took the rest of the two teams to separate them, and they both started the game with a little blood on their faces. We made no further kick about Jerry playing. All our boys wanted him in the game. 'Get him!' was the word passed down the line. And after that little mix-up both sides was eager to begin.

“We kicked off. I noticed this here Rooney person got down after the kick-off rather slow, sticking close to his friend Breittmann. He was at left tackle, right, between Breittmann at guard, and Dolan, who played end.

“Jerry, he caught the kick-off and come prancing up the field like a prairie whirlwind. But Dolan and me got to him about the same time, and as we downed him Tom Sharp, quite accidental, stepped on to his head with both feet.

“'Foul!' yells the referee, running up and waving his hand at Tom Sharp. 'Get off the field, you! I penalize Kingstown thirty yards for deliberate foul play!'

“But Jerry jumped up—it took more'n a little thing like that to feaze Jerry—and shoved the referee aside.

“'No, you don't put him out of this game,' says Jerry. 'I want him in it. I'll put him out all right!'

“Then there was a squabble, that ended with half of both teams ordered off the field. And the upshot of which was that everybody on both sides agreed to abolish all umpires and referees, and get along without any penalties whatever, or any officials but the time-keeper. No, sir, none of us boys was in any temper by that time to be interfered with nor dictated to by officials.

“No, what followed wasn't hampered any by technicalities. No, sir, it wasn't drop the handkerchief. There wasn't any Hoyle or Spalding or Queensberry about it. It was London prize ring, savate, jiu juitsi and GrÆco-Roman, all mixed up, with everybody making his own ground rules. The first down, when Tom Sharp picked up that Lincoln College Captain and hit Jerry Coakley over the head with him, five Lincoln College substitutes give a yell and threw off their sweaters and run on to the field. Then we heard another yell, and our substitutes come charging into the fray and by the end of the first half there was eighteen men on each side, including three in citizens' clothes who were using brass knucks and barrel staves.”

Joe paused a moment, dwelling internally upon memories evidently too sweet for words. Then he sighed and murmured: “No, sir, the game ain't what it was in them days. Kick and run and forward pass and such darned foolishness! Football has went to the dogs!

“Well,” he resumed, flexing his muscles reminiscently, “neither side wasted any time on end runs or punts. It was punch the line, and then punch the line some more, and during the first ten minutes of play the ball didn't move twenty yards either way from the centre of the field, with a row on all the time as to whose ball it ought to be. As a matter of fact, it was whoever's could keep his hands on to it.

“It was the third down before I noticed this fellow Rooney particular. Then our quarterback sent a play through between guard and tackle. It was up to Rooney to make the hole for it.

“As the signal was give, and the ball passed back, Breittmann laid his arm across Rooney's shoulders, and I heard him say something in Dutch to him. They moved forward like one man, not fast, but determined like. A big college duffer tried to get through Rooney and spill the play. This here Rooney took him around the waist and slammed him on to the ground with a yell like a steamship that's discovered fire in her coal bunkers, and then knelt on the remains, while the play went on over 'em. I noticed Breittmann had a hard time getting Rooney off of him. They carried the fellow off considerably sprained, and two more Lincoln College fellows shucked their wraps and run in to take his place.

“The very next play went through the same hole, only this time the fellow that went down under Rooney got up with blood soaking through his shoulder padding and swore he'd been bit. But nobody paid any attention to him, and the Lincoln boys put Jerry Coakley in opposite Rooney.

“'You cross-eyed, pigeon-toed Orangeman of a hod-carrier, you,' says Jerry, when we lined up, trying to intimidate Rooney, 'I'll learn you football.'

“But Rooney, with his left hand hold of Breittmann's, never said a word. He just looked sideways up at Breittmann like he was scared, or mebby shy, and Breittmann said something in Dutch to him.

“That play we made five yards, and we made it through Jerry Coakley, too, Mr. Rooney officiating. When Breittmann got his friend off Jerry, Jerry set up and tried to grin, but he couldn't. He felt himself all over, surprised, and took his place in the line without saying a word.

“Then we lost the ball on a fumble, which is to say the Lincoln centre jumped on to Tom Sharp's wrists with both feet when he tried to pass it, and Jerry Coakley grabbed it. The first half closed without a score, with the ball still in the centre of the field.

“The second half, I could see right away, Jerry Coakley had made up his mind to do up Rooney. The very first play Lincoln made was a guard's back punch right at Rooney. I reckon the whole Lincoln team was in that play, with Jerry Coakley in the van.

“We got into it, too. All of us,” Joe paused again, with another reflective smile. Pretty soon he continued.

“Yes, sir, that was some scrimmage. And in the midst of it, whoever had the ball dropped it. But for a minute, nobody seemed to care. And then we discovered that them unsportsmanlike Lincoln College students had changed to baseball shoes with metal spikes between the halves. We hadn't thought of that.

“After about a minute of this mauling, clawing mess, right out of the midst of it rolled the ball. And then came this here Rooney crawling after it—crawling I say!—on his hands and feet.

“He picked it up and straightened himself.

“'Run, Rooney, run!' says I. And he had a clear field. But he didn't seem to realize it. He just tucked that ball under one arm, and ambled.

“Half a dozen of us fell in and tried to make interference for him—but he wouldn't run; he just dog-trotted, slow and comfortable. And in a second Jerry Coakley sifted through and tackled him.

“Rooney stopped. Stopped dead in his track, as if he was surprised. And then, using only one hand—only one hand, mind you—he picked that there Jerry Coakley up, like he was an infant, give him one squeeze, and slung him. Yes, sir, Jerry was all sort of crumpled up when he lit!

“And he kept on, slow and easy and gentle. The Lincoln gang spilled the interference. But that didn't bother Rooney any. Slow and certain and easy he went down that field. And every time he was tackled he separated that tackier from himself and treated him like he had Jerry.

“Yes, sir, he strung behind him ten men out of the nineteen players Lincoln College had in that game, as he went down the field. From where I was setting on top of the Lincoln centre rush, I counted 'em as he took 'em. Slow and solemn and serious like an avenging angel, Mr. Rooney made for them goal posts, taking no prisoners, and leaving the wounded and dead in a long windrow behind him. It wasn't legalized football, mebby, but it was a grand and majestic sight to see that stoop-shouldered feller with the red whiskers proceeding calmly and unstoppably forward like the wrath of God.

“Yes, sir, the game was ours. We thought it was, leastways. All he had to do was touch that there ball to the ground! The whole of Kingstown was drawing in its breath to let out a cheer as soon as he done it.

“But it never let that yell. For when he reached the goal——”

Here Joe broke off again and chuckled.

“Say,” he said, “you ain't going to believe what I'm telling you now. It's too unlikely. I didn't believe it myself when I seen it. But it happened. Yes, sir, that nut never touched the ground with the ball!

“Instead, with the ball still under one arm, he climbed a goal post. Climbed it, I tell you, with both legs and one arm. And setting straddle of that cross bar believe me or not, he began to shuck. In front of all that crowd, dud after dud, he shucked.

“And there wasn't no cheers then, for in a minute there he set, a monkey! Yes, sir, the biggest blamed monkey you ever seen, trying to crack that football open on a goal post under the belief that it was a cocoa-nut. Monkey, did I say? Monkey ain't any word for it! He was a regular ape; he was one of these here orang-outang baboons! Yes, sir, a regular gosh-darned Darwinian gorilla!”

Joe took a fresh light for his cigar, and cocked his eye again at my sporting supplement. “I notice,” he said, sarcastically, “Princeton had a couple of men hurt yesterday in the Yale game. Well, accidents is bound to happen even in ring-around-the-rosy or prisoner's base. What?”