Sam Bangs led the way with the confident tread of a drum-major down the Harvard side--for the custom is to apportion the seats on one of the long sides of the field among the friends of one college, and those on the other correspondingly--until he reached a desirable location. Then we established ourselves according to his directions and waited. It was rather a long wait--nearly two hours--during which I had ample leisure to philosophize to the top of my bent. We had to console us Sam's assurance that it was necessary to take time by the forelock to this radical extent in order to secure satisfactory places. For the next two hours a steady stream of people poured along the two sides of the field until they became great walls of crimson and blue humanity. Flags waved, badges fluttered, the human voice worked itself hoarse in every form of encouraging outcry from the full-chested song to the indiscriminate cat-call. In front of each section of seats stood a separate youth, who at very short intervals, and at the slightest provocation, invoked cheers upon cheers for everything and everybody, from the captain of the team to the college coster-monger. An hour before the game began the benches were crowded, and I seemed to have recognized in the passing throng every person of consideration among my acquaintance. Mrs. Willoughby Walton and her party were among the last to arrive. I was curious to see where they would bestow themselves, seeing that we were all packed tight as herrings, and there was only here and there an occasional chance for another mortal to squeeze in, and that generally at the cost of clambering over the heads of two or three hundred people. As Josephine said to me later, I might have known that Mrs. Walton would not put herself in any such plight. I was just wondering what on earth her elegant procession, which had halted in front of the section next to ours, was going to do, when of a sudden the occupants of the two best rows of seats trooped out in orderly file and relinquished their places to the fashionable party. Sam, after a moment's dazed silence, which must have been gall to him, for he does not like to be imposed upon in such matters, furnished us with the solution of this act of legerdemain. They were mill hands subsidized to come early and hold the seats until Mrs. Willoughby arrived.