At Smith's elbow was a small, black-haired Jew with a pock-marked face. In front of them were four people who could have been the shipping clerk for a hardware house, his fiancee, who presided conceivably over a switchboard in some uptown hotel, a gentleman who looked like a college professor and who was probably night clerk in a drug store, and lastly a chunky and well-fed person who, from his turning at once to the cotton reports, could probably be put down as holding some responsible position in a Wall Street house. The farther the eye strayed, the more motley became the array, the more difficult any generalization. "It's really useless," said Smith, guessing the girl's thought. "If any one's missing, it's because he's home sick in bed. Now, tell me how much you need to be told." Nearly everything, it seemed; so for the next ten minutes her companion held forth in a compendious but concise exordium on the great American game. During this interim the huge concrete stands filled entirely, and the populace began to spill over onto the field. "That means ground rules--hit into the crowd good for only two bases," said several critics, for the general information of an ambient air fully as well informed as the speakers. Down on the field the interesting machinery was in process of oiling--the batting and fielding practice of either side in turn, the pitchers lazily warming up, the motley crew on the side lines in their amusing and alert play of high-low. Helen, fascinated by the players' movements, the accurate interception of stinging grounders, the graceful parabolas of long flies to the deep outfield, as well as by the spectacle of the orderly base and coaching lines laid out on the smooth, close-clipped greensward, watched as though in a new medium of sight. This was little like anything she had ever seen. A yell from ten thousand throats announced that the Giants'--and the crowd's--favorite was to pitch. Another yell, though less in volume, indicated that the opposing pitcher also was named and approved, not from any delight in the selection, but merely that the choice was made. The umpires in their sober blue uniforms took their places; the home team went into the field; the pitcher picked up the new white ball and settled his foot firmly on the slab--and the game was on. It can serve no useful purpose now, when that game is done and its year's pennant determined, to play over the two hours' traffic of it. Suffice it to say that the tide of battle rose and fell sufficiently to keep forty thousand delirious spectators on their feet at least one quarter of the time. Nothing of Oriental calm about the crowd that day; nothing of passive acceptance of whatever the Fates might have in store. Every soul within that enclosure was a rabid partisan, bound up in the fortune of the fray; and if the concentrated desire of forty thousand minds could avail aught, the home team should certainly have felt the psychic urge.