The schedule of football games for the rest of the season is as follows: Oct. 10, Wesleyan at Middletown, Conn.; Oct. 14, Yale at New Haven, Conn.; Oct. 24, Tufts at Worcester; Oct. 31, Amherst at Worcester; Nov. 14, University of Maine at Bangor, Me.; Nov. 21, Worcester Polytechnic Institute at Worcester. Football in the "prep" department is well on. William J. McCarthy, of Providence, is manager, and Michael F. McCabe, of New York City, captain. The schedule has not yet been completely arranged, nor have the permanent players been selected. The candidates are: Garratt Barey, Walter J. Dwyer, Charles J. Smith, Jr., Frank J. Conti, William H. McCarty, of last year's team, and these new men: J. Albert Hayes, Michael R. Beecher, Frank J. Callahan, Paul J. Lowell, Henry D. Chapin, Patrick M. Eisenhart, John P. Doherty, Edwin H. O'Neill, Augustine F. O'Neill, Vincent I. Crowther, and John T. Shay. After the above was in type the Wesleyan and Yale games were played, an account of which will be given in our next number. The scores were: Holy Cross 11, Wesleyan 6; Holy Cross 10, Yale, 36. THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY. ASTOR, LENOX AND SEN FOUNDATIONS The holy Cross Purple. THE HOLY CROSS PURPLE is a Literary Magazine, published at Holy Cross College, Worcester, Mass. Its aim is to cultivate a high literary spirit among the students by exercising them in both critical and creative composition. It serves also as a bond between the Alumni and their Alma Mater chronicling their successes and telling briefly the important happenings of college life. Subscription: One dollar a year, payable in advance; single copies, 15 cents. THE HOLY CROSS PURPLE is issued every month, excepting July, August and September. Entered at the Post Office at Worcester, Mass., as second-class mail matter. VOL. XVI. No. 2. NOVEMBER, 1903. THE LONG AGO. Sweet dreams of long ago! In tears I gaze out through the night, When the sun e'er shone and my heart was light: Sweet songs of long ago! Their notes betimes run through my dreams, Till I sing 'neath the light of the fair moonbeams Sweet days of long ago! When all was hope and faith and love, O, I would that Now and Then were wove, JOSEPH F. WICKHAM, '04. A WESTERN SINGER. "This is the dying-time of the year." More than eight years have passed since that November day when Eugene Field, sitting in the parlor of his western home, uttered these sadly beautiful words. And perhaps they came to warn him that the next day would be his own "dying-time," that the morrow would bring him death "with no pain, no lingering illness, in the midst of his work and in the zenith of his strength." The sweet singer of the west was mourned by all alike; he was laid away to rest, while everyone said: "Good-bye; God bless you." And this day the memory of Eugene Field is as green as it ever was. His friend has said: It will be green when the pyramids have crumbled beneath the touch of time and empires are forgotten." But why? How did this weaver of verse entwine himself so closely about the hearts of men that his name and his writings fade not, but rather grow brighter and brighter in the lapse of years? We can only answer as many others have answered before, by his winning personality and his magnificent character; by the sparkling wit and keen humor noted in so many of his works, and especially by his poems of childhood, for Eugene Field loved any and all children; he was their poet laureate. - A more jovial fellow than Field never lived -he "bubbled over with jocoseness." When a boy he was ever playing tricks upon his playmates; when a lecturer, he on one occasion introduced himself as Carl Schurz, the famous publicist, and then delivered a speech in "broken Dutch," which, for the time being, forced the audience to believe that Mr. Schurz was not a very good speaker or master of English. When known all over the country as a poet and journalist, this western litterateur would make fun of his own friends in "Sharps and Flats"; and often he wrote a poem, put it in a paper with a friend's name signed, and on the next day criticised it most mercilessly. But behind, beyond all his fun and jokes and comicalities, we can see that strange two-fold personality so characteristic of Eugene Field. He would go from the gay to the sad with a bound; his versatility was wonderful; now he would be humorous, now serious; truly his humor lay "As close to tears as to laughter." In one of his funniest dialect poems we are greatly amused by the character Casey, the dinner and the "high society of Red Hoss Mountain;" but does not the western singer sound a deeper, sadder note when he says: "Oh! them days on Red Hoss Mountain when the skies wuz fair 'nd blue, When money flowed like likker, 'nd folks wuz brave 'nd true! Oh! them times on Red Hoss Mountain in the Rockies fur away, There's no sich place nor times like them as I kin find today!" After this we have some more wit and comi cality; we laugh heartily at the humorous remarks, the funny situations; and then words. filled with deep, living, human sympathy, words through which the noble and lofty spirit of the poet is shining, words far above the plane of humor are suddenly flashed out: "And you, Oh cherished brother, a-sleepin' way out west, With Red Hoss Mountain huggin' you close to its lovin' breast, Oh, do you dream in your last sleep of how we used to do, Of how we worked our little claims together, me 'nd you?" But perhaps the most striking example of Field's strange humor is found in his well-known work, "A Father's Letter." In one part he writes: "The yaller rooster froze his feet a-wadin' through the snow, And now he leans agin the fence when he starts in to crow." 'Tis a most comical picture, and yet not many lines farther on we find worked in with perfect propriety this tender thought: "Earth seems nearer heaven when mother sends her love." A labor along the lines which Field especially loved was the putting of Horace into quaint and humorous English verse. Speaking of the old master, he says: |