Jesse Lynch Williams

“ And they were trying mass-on-tackle and guards-back plays, and the ball still staid in the middle of the field, and all of you thousands of people were staring at us, I suppose, though we didn't know nor care about that. Then this play was made.
They had the ball. "Twenty-nine—seventeen—forty-five," yelled their captain. Now something inside of me said that that signal meant a kick. "Here's where I block it," I said to myself, gritting my teeth; and the instant the ball was put in play—bang—I went through my man, yelling as I did so to the rest of the team, "It's a kick, fellows!" ”

“ You'll remember this play, I know—when the ball was on their thirty-yard line and they dropped back for a kick? You remember we had worked the ball steadily up the field from our twenty-yard line chiefly by that series of tandem-mass plays. Somehow Cap was sending them all through on my side. But we were moving together in great shape, and we were desperate. Great Scott! how we were smashing their line, and how those fellows tried to use up time! I'm only a big ungainly guard. We fellows don't make any of the brilliant dashes that you people yell over. There's nothing romantic about our job ”

“ And I'm all alone in my room, with my right ankle bound up, and sometimes it throbs like the dickens, and I'm glad of it.
Jack, the trainer, was with me for a while, but he went down to the dinner again. He said I could come, but I wouldn't. I deserve to be left alone. I lost the game for the college, and I'm a big awkward kid, and— But I haven't been all alone all the time! ”