Stover at Yale by Owen Johnson

Almost before he knew it Stover was in the car and the wheels were moving at last irresistibly toward the field. There was no longer any pretense in those last awful moments that had in them all the concentrated hopes and fears of the weeks that had rushed away. The faces of his own teammates were only gray faces without identity. He saw someone's lips moving incessantly, but he did not remember whose they were. Opposite him, another man was bending over, his head hidden in his hands. Someone else at his side was nervously locking and unlocking his fingers, breathing short, hard breaths. He remembered only the stillness of it all, the forgetfulness of others, the set stares, and Charlie de Soto fidgeting on the seat and nervously humming something irrelevant.

Caught up in this unreasoning intensity of a young nation, filled, too, with this exaggerated passion of combat, Stover leaned back limply. Outside, the street was choked with hilarious parties packed in rushing carriages, blue or orange-and-black. Horns and rattles sounded like tiny sounds in his ears, and his eyes saw only grotesque blurred shapes that swept across them.