those with my fellow-members of that Committee in the late '80's and the
'90's, including Camp of Yale; Billy Brooks, Bert Waters, Bob Wrenn and
Percy Haughton of Harvard; Paul Dashiell of Annapolis; Tracy Harris,
Alex Moffat and John Fine of Princeton; and Professor Dennis of
Cornell. Later the Committee, as you know, was enlarged by the admission
of representatives from the West; and among them were Alonzo Stagg, of
Chicago University, and Harry Williams of Minnesota. Finer fellows I
have never known; they were one and all Nature's noblemen.

"Some of them, alas! like Alex Moffat, have gone to the Great Beyond.
Representing rival universities, between whose student bodies and some
of whose alumni, partisan feeling ran high in the '90's, nothing,
however, save good fellowship and good cheer ever existed between Alex
and me.

"I am genuinely glad that I played the game with my team-mates;
witnessed for many years nearly all the big games of the eastern
colleges; mingled season after season with the players and the
enthusiastic alumni of the competing universities in attendance at the
annual matches; sat and deliberated each recurring year, as I have said,
with those fine fellows who made and amended the rules, and in this way
helped to develop the game, the manliest of all our sports; and that I
have thus breathed, recreated and been invigorated in a football
atmosphere every autumn for more than a third of a century. Growing
older every year, one still remains young--as young in heart and spirit
as when he donned the moleskins, and caught and kicked and carried the
ball himself. And all these football experiences make one a happier,
stronger and more loyal man.

"I remember in my prep. school days playing upon a team made up largely
of high school boys. One game stands out in my recollection. It was
against the Freshmen team of the University of Pennsylvania, captained
by Johnny Thayer who went down with the _Titanic_.

"Arriving after the game had started, I came out to the side-lines and
called to the captain asking whether I was to play. He glowered at me
and made no answer. A few minutes later our 'second captain' called to
me to come into the game, saying that Smith was only to play until I
arrived. Quick as a flash I stepped into the field of play, and almost
instantly Thayer kicked the ball over the rush line and it came bounding
down right into my arm. Off I went like a flash through the line, past
the bac