November 24, 1898: “Thanksgiving Day,–Up betimes to seek out my warmest cloathes and greate cloake with new striped orange cravatte, as well, wherein to deck me for this day’s sports betwixt ye rival colledges, and mighty glas to be so well rid of affairs at the office, the others toyling there very jealous. My wife would have it I should don a crimson neck cloth to do honor to my colledge, but I denied her, retayning the striped cravattem her that my father wore when he did go a schoolboy to Nassau Hall [at Princeton University], regardless of mine own colledge. But she very contray calleth me traitor and unnatural man, and prinketh her in her crimson gowne and red roses in very spite of me, and I not the hearte to chide her. So with manyfold furry skinnes and wrappes by coach to the playground, a tedious long drive but for the merry company on the same way with us winding loud horns, with wavying of motley ribands, untill getting to the very doors of ye empty field, we find a mighty mob with loud mouthed peddlars offering their wares,–play bills, pamphlets, passports, and fluttering banners, with many more ribands and horns and little footballs stuck on pinnes, very pretty.
“Then showed I my passports and coming in with the pushing crowde very glad to sit in our seat to behold the joyful antics and clamor of the colledge boys prancing on their benches, shouting their shouts, croaking as they were toades,* and singing ribald songs to lewd musique."
“*Allusion to Yale Freshman’s adaptation of the Frog Chorus from Aristophanes” [Edwin Emerson's note]
- from Pepys's Ghost: His Wanderings in Greater Gotham; His Adventures in the Spanish War; Together with his Minor Exploits in the Field of Love and Fashion; With his Thoughts Thereon; by Edwin Emerson Jr; 1899; Boston, R. G. Badger & Co. Public domain in the U.S.
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