"Well, the referee he gives the teams a talking to about keeping the
nation-al game clean and free from disgrace. 'The first man,' he says,
'that forgets he's playing lacrosse and begins laying the hickory on
anybody,' he says, ''ll get a good long penalty.'
"Then Alderman McWhirter takes a whirl at 'em; him with the spongy
whiskers on each side of his face, and a jaw like the vestibul of a
street car.
"Vestibool, is it? Where did ye learn French? You muster lived in
Montreal.
"You never? Well, hold your hair on; hold your hair on. Kinder soured
on your food, ain't yer? What d'ye eat for breakfast anyway? Malted
soapsuds, chipped mule fritters, er any o' them fancy foods?
"Porridge! my, but you're away behind the times. Wake up, man, wake
up, the fast express is tearin' down the track and----
"All right. I'll proceed. So McWhirter gives the bunch a spiel a mile
long and would be going yet, but somebody calls out to him to dry up,
an' he gets red in the face and dries up, and the game starts.
"For about one minute they played like Sunday school was a joy to them,
and then the Easts bangs the ball into the net and the goal umpire he
ups with his hand, meanin' a goal and----
"What's that? You know that means a goal, eh! Feeling pretty pert
this morning, eh! Mebbe you'd like to go on an' tell the story to
yourself.
"Oh! all right, all right. Well, anyway, up goes the goal umpire's
hand for a goal, and down goes the umpire for the count, for Tip Doolen
of the Stars cracks him a wallop on his brain factory you could hear a
mile away. And all the Easts piles on to Tip and it took the police
fifteen minutes to get 'em untied. And the police sergeant he says,
it's Tip to the station, but the goal umpire wakes up and says he
wouldn't lodge no complaint, for Tip and him's friendly, only would
they please get a new goal umpire, he says, and they did.
"Then the police sergeant wouldn't let 'em go on playing till he'd had
a little say, and you'd oughter heard it. He says, 'It looks to me
like most er you fellers is spoilin' for a clubbin', and I'd hate,' he
says, 'to disappoint you if that's the case. But I'm willing to stay
on duty a few hours beyond me time,' he says, 'in order to please you.'
"And the fellers swear they're ready to go on with the game and play
like kinder-gart'ners. So the sergeant says, 'Let her go,' he says.
"So it went all right for quite a while and there wasn't much doin'
except the noise, for both sides had big gangs there and you cert'nly
could hear 'em.
"At the end of the second quarter it was a tie--two goals each, and not
more'n half the players on the mourners' bench.
"What! You don't know what the mourners' bench is? Say, if you'd only
study the English language 'stead of loading your think tank with them
furrin' words you wouldn't need nobody to tell you that the mourners'
bench is just another name for the penalty bench.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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