His
face is set towards the ball, and even though he may crush a dozen small
boys, he'll make his way through the mob and come out triumphant. And
he'll be the victor longer than anyone else, in spite of the envy and
fighting and pushing about him.
To an observer, alike unintelligent about the rules of a football game,
and the conditions which govern the barter and exchange and fluctuations
of the world's money market, there is as much difference between the
sight of a mass of boys on a play-ground losing their equilibrium over a
spheroid of rubber and a mass of men losing their coolness and temper
and mental and nervous balance on change as there is between a pine
sapling and a mighty forest king--merely a difference of age. The
mighty, seething, intensely concentrated mass in its emphatic tendency
to one point is the same, in the utter disregard of mental and physical
welfare. The momentary triumphs of transitory possessions impress a
casual looker-on with the same fearful idea--that the human race, after
all, is savage to the core, and cultivates its savagery in an inflated
happiness at own nearness to perfection.
But the bell clangs sharply, the overheated, nervous, tingling boys
fall into line, and the sudden transition from massing disorder to
military precision cuts short the ten minutes' musing.
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