Then come the men of twenty years ago stately in white
gowns and mortar-boards; then the Triennials, with a class boy
of two years, costumed in miniature and trundled in a go-cart
by a nervous father. The Highlanders stalk by to the skirl of
bagpipes with their contingent of tall boys, the coming sons
of Alma Mater. The thirty-five-year graduates, eighty strong,
the men who are handling the nation, wear a unanimous sudden
growth of rolling gray beard. Class after class they come,
till over a thousand men have marched out to the music of bands,
down Yale Field and past the great circle of the seats, and
have settled in brilliant masses of color on the "bleachers."
Then from across the field rise men's voices singing. They
sing the college songs which their fathers sang, which their
sons and great-grandsons will sing. The rhythm rolls forward
steadily in all those deep voices:
"Nor time nor change can aught avail," the words come,
"To break the friendships formed at Yale."
There is many a breath caught in the crowded multitude to hear
the men sing that.
Then the game--and Yale wins. The classes pour on the field in
a stormy sea of color, and dance quadrilles, and form long lines
hand in hand which sway and cross and play fantastically in a
dizzying, tremendous jubilation which fills all of Yale Field.
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